Clark County reports language access rollout and central grant office after 2024 legislation

Clark County told the Assembly Government Affairs Committee on Feb. 20 that the county has filed a language access plan and is implementing a multi-year rollout to standardize how residents access services in languages other than English.

"We filed our language access plan in July of 2024, supported by many of our community partners," Government Affairs Manager Joanna Jacob said. She described a countywide survey and department briefings conducted after the 2024 legislation requiring local governments to prepare language access plans.

Jacob said the county has identified vital documents that affect people’s rights to benefits or permits, assigned a language-access liaison in each of 38 departments, and established a countywide language access committee. She said the effort will be multi-year and aims to create consistent signage, translation pathways and document access across county offices.

On grants, Chief Financial Officer Jessica Colvin described a centralized grant office created during the pandemic to help departments manage CARES Act and ARPA awards. Colvin said the county expended federal funds in the hundreds of millions in the recent fiscal year and that the centralized office now focuses on compliance, application support, monitoring, reporting and training for departments and nonprofit subrecipients.

Colvin told the committee she expects to track and report FY25–FY26 federal grant impacts as the county completes budget estimates, and both she and County Manager Kevin Schiller said they are monitoring possible federal grant funding changes. "If federal grants went away tomorrow," Schiller said, the county estimated a large revenue exposure and is preparing contingency analyses for the budget.

Ending: County officials asked lawmakers for follow-up engagement and offered to provide further breakdowns of grant-funded positions and multi-year federal funding expenditures.