Documents: Assembly candidate deserted soldiers
During the height of the Iraq War, Nevada Assembly candidate Mack Miller deserted his fellow Army soldiers on the frontline, court documents show.
Miller, a Republican hoping to win the District 5 seat, now faces significant backlash from soldiers who say he failed to take responsibility for ditching them in the desert. But Miller says he was put on a mandatory leave and told not to return after he suffered a back injury while his unit was detonating a bomb.
“I’m very angry,” said Richard Carreon, a Las Vegas resident who was a sergeant in Miller’s unit and president of the Nevada Veterans Association. “This guy is parading around like he left honorably, but in reality he deserted the unit at a time his brothers were in the fight of our lives.”
A military court found Miller, then a private first class, guilty of desertion and sentenced him to 18 months confinement, a demotion to private and a bad conduct discharge, according to documents obtained by the Review-journal. Miller twice unsuccessfully appealed the ruling.
Miller, 41, joined the Army in spring 2007 and was stationed in Germany before his unit was deployed to Iraq in August 2007. The Las Vegas native, who owns a firm called M&A Legal Management, left Iraq just three months later and did not return.
“I got thrown into a wall and I suffered injuries,” Miller said in an
MILLER
“And so they think they’re voting for an increase of pie.”
We certainly can’t forget the millions pumped into various educational programs during Gov. Brian Sandoval’s time.
Nor can we make excuses for all of the Clark County School District’s budgetary woes — I’m sure there is
more than one area where spending could be reduced.
But those who say the current system is broken are gearing up for a big fight in the 2019 legislative session.
Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson acknowledges the battle won’t be easy. Directing room taxes back to the supplemental fund would require cuts elsewhere in the state’s budget, for example.
“Our intention this upcoming session is to begin to have that conversation
of updating how we fund education across the board for the state,” he said. “And part of that is, I think, making adjustments to an old and outdated public education funding system.”
Contact Amelia Pak-harvey at apak-harvey@reviewjournal. com or 702-383-4630. Follow @ Ameliapakharvey on Twitter. On Education appears every other Saturday.