Q&A is, is that there are more installations, the reimbursements on the retail rate are going to come down to recognize that.
There are people to this day who say, “Brian Sandoval never really supported Education Savings Accounts. If he had supported ESAs, he would have threatened to veto the 2017-2019 budget, which did not contain ESA funding.” What’s the truth about that? Well, I sponsored ESA bills. In 2013, I sponsored an ESA bill that got a hearing and no vote. So school choice is something that I’ve talked about from Day One. In 2015, the school choice bill was passed, and it was the subject of litigation. It went all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. And so I made a commitment and followed through with that commitment and put $60 million in the budget to fund ESAs. So if ever there was a supporter of school choice, if you count the top five, I would hope that I would be in those top five. Now you mentioned about trying to force that issue. And as I said, I’ve got a state to run. There are teachers who need to get paid, there are school districts that need to be able to develop their budgets, there’s higher education that needs to develop their budget, there are a lot of people who are counting on stability within the state. And so, frankly, during the course of the session, I think there was a time when we would have had ESAs, and it didn’t happen because there were some within the Republican Party who felt like it wasn’t enough and wanted more. So I will say that we could have had ESAs. It didn’t happen. But at the end of the session, I was able to negotiate $20 million more for Opportunity Scholarships, which is going to open up at least a couple thousand more seats for children who are 300 percent or less of poverty to be able to attend the school of their choice. One of your campaign promises when you ran — it was a recession — was to put Nevada back to work. Unemployment has dropped considerably since you took over. Do you consider that a campaign promise fulfilled? I don’t know if it’s ever fulfilled, because I’m not done yet. So, when I was elected in November of 2010, the unemployment rate was 14.3 percent, and today it’s 4.7. We had lost 175,000 jobs, we’ve replaced that with 230,000 jobs, our average weekly wage is the highest that it has ever been, the amount of unemployment claims is almost the lowest that it’s ever been. And
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we brought in companies; Tesla is the one that everybody knows. You know I tell this story as the chairman of the economic development board: Our first board meeting took 20 minutes. And now they take hours because of the number of the companies that want to come to Nevada.
There are always risks, though. The state was not put at financial risk because of Faraday Future not coming, but the state takes a hit when things like that happen, doesn’t it? Everybody thought it was going to happen, but in the end, it just didn’t work out. Fair enough. I mean, there is nobody who is more disappointed than I am in Faraday. Faraday got all the attention, but for me, the bigger priority was developing Apex. And one of the reasons that we couldn’t bring a Tesla-like project to Southern Nevada is because there was no infrastructure at Apex. So, for me, just as important — actually, more important than Faraday — was getting that infrastructure into Apex so that we could attract and market Southern Nevada for a Tesla-scale project. And I’m hopeful that the Faraday site will be very attractive to other companies, because it’s ready to go, and they’ll be able to go vertical right away. This question is going to sound like it’s not serious, but it is a little bit serious. You were the first governor to ride in a driverless car, you’ve championed bringing companies like Apple and Tesla to Northern Nevada, UAV research to Southern Nevada, Switch to both ends of the state. Tesla founder Elon Musk recently came out and said that he thinks that artificial intelligence is a threat to people. What was your reaction to that? I’m the incoming chairman of the National Governor’s Association. As part of that, I have an initiative called “Ahead of the Curve.” And it talks about some of this disruptive technology and how it’s going to affect decision-makers and state governments. Elon agreed to come to Providence, R.I., and we did a comfy couch-type interview where I asked him questions, and I asked him a question about robots, and should people be concerned about ‑robots taking their jobs? And that’s when he gave that response with regard to artificial intelligence. I am nowhere near qualified to be able to respond to that, but if he’s concerned and given what a visionary and how knowledgeable he is, then it’s something that we should perhaps pay attention to.
You’ll probably be remembered not only for embracing the Affordable Care Act, after it was upheld by the Supreme Court, but for expanding Medicaid, establishing a state insurance exchange and then defending those programs when other people said we need to get rid of them. Is that going to be your legacy? People hopefully have not forgotten that there was a time when UMC was $50 million to $100 million in the red. I visited the emergency room at UMC, and saw people literally lying on gurneys in the hallways. I am one that, with Mike Willden, my chief of staff, confronted a mental healthcare crisis. So part of my motivation for opting in was making sure that people who were getting their medical care in emergency rooms could get preventative health care and live higher-quality lives. (Medicaid expansion) has brought billions of dollars into the state in terms of improving our healthcare systems; it has taken rural hospitals and UMC from being in the red to being in the black. So I’ve seen the difference that it’s made in our state and how it’s improved the quality of life. People are living healthier and happier lives. It’s pretty hard to go to work when you’re sick. And that’s why I took a very firm position that we had to be held harmless. I don’t want the flexibility to have to make cuts. That’s not flexibility to me. I want to maintain what we’ve been able to establish and build in this state, and I think the proof is there, that we are better off as a result of that. Was that a hard decision to make, at the time? It was. And we did a lot of homework prior to making that decision. And although some members of my party were disappointed in me being the first Republican governor in the U.S. to make the decision to opt in, after having done my due diligence, it was a decision that had to be made in the best interests of the state. And so, again, everything that we thought would happen has happened in terms of improving the delivery of healthcare in the state. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Am I happy with what’s happening on the exchange, our providers leaving the state? Absolutely not. Am I happy with the premiums that are being charged for people? Absolutely not. But those are things that we could work on and improve. But in terms of the Medicaid population, it has been a game-changer, so that’s why I’ve been so aggressive in jealously guarding the people of Nevada.