Bowled over by Centennial price shock
State to explore whether tariffs raised project cost
President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs may be driving up costs for state road construction projects, as displayed during a recent round of bids for the next phase of the Centennial Bowl interchange in northwest Las Vegas, the Nevada Department of Transportation said Monday.
Ndothadestimated it would cost $49 million to $59 million to build the next three ramps linking U.S. Highway 95 and the 215 Beltway, but Las Vegas Paving submitted a lone bid of $61.5 million to complete the project by 2020, NDOT Director Rudy Malfabon said.
The higher-than-anticipated bid was attributed to Trump’s order this year to impose a tariff, or tax on imported goods, of 25 percent for steel and 10 percent for aluminum. ▶ Page 2B
“We’ve been hearing from contractors that it is causing an issue nationwide with steel prices,” Malfabon said during the monthly NDOT board meeting held Monday.
Malfabon said he will examine whether the high-priced proposal was caused by any internal errors by NDOT, which would likely prompt the agency to restart the bidding process.
If the steel tariffs are the culprit, then the NDOT board will consider on Aug. 13 whether to award a
ROADS
their spots if they waited.
Twenty-two of the original 24 took the school up on its offer and returned last week, including Tanner Cavanaugh, 28, of Spring Creek, a small town 15 miles southeast of Elko.
“It gave me an opportunity to really save up money,” Cavanaugh said of the delay, though he added that did force him to ask for his job back as an emergency medical responder just after he submitted his two-week notice.
The quick turnaround between school and work, plus the flexibility physician assistants have in switching between specialties — a big perk for Cavanaugh — are attractive to applicants, Schwenk said. About 800 prospective students applied for the available spots.
Each of the selected candidates has a Nevada connection — either as a current resident, someone with family in the state or having spent at least part of his or her childhood here.
While Schwenk said he hopes the graduates stay in Nevada to practice, he would anticipate they’ll end up with “dozens of job offers across the states and they’ll have to pick.”
A March 2018 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges said the number of physician assistants nationwide is expected to more than double by 2030 to 242,000. The increasing supply of PAS and advanced practice registered nurses are expected to partly “offset the projected growing shortfall
of physicians,” according to the report.
Nevada ranks as one of the highest paying states for physician assistants, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It ranks third behind Washington and New Jersey, with an annual mean wage of $119,210.
The UNR program is the second in the state and the first in Nevada at a public institution. Touro University Nevada in Henderson launched a 28-month program in 2004.
Touro accepted 66 students last year and plans to expand to 80 by 2020. The school has graduated about 550 students, program director Phil Tobin said.
Schwenk said the UNR program may expand to 36 students “over time.”
Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter. Review-journal staff writer Natalie Bruzda contributed to this report.