Letter to the Legislators

If you would like to send a letter to the legislators, I can give you the list of 62 email addresses if you are having trouble downloading it from any of the sources where I have posted them, email me at lunkwitzfop21@yahoo.com

below is the letter that I sent to them if it helps give you ideas on what to include in your letter, great! if you would like to personalize this letter and send it totally cool with me.

      Honorable Members of the Nevada State Senate and The Nevada State Assembly, my name is Paul Lunkwitz, I am the President of the Fraternal Order of Police Nevada C.O. Lodge 21. I have been a Correctional Officer for 20 years with the Nevada Department of Corrections(NDOC).I have spent my entire life as a State of Nevada Resident. I am writing this letter to you all in an effort to illustrate just how difficult being a state of Nevada Employee has been in these ever changing times. 

      The NDOC has been notoriously underfunded and understaffed throughout my entire career. With a turnover rate that is consistently near 30%, the NDOC has a difficult time staffing its prisons and camps under normal circumstances. During the recent pandemic  we have been asked to come to work, an inherently dangerous place, while our family and friends were staying home collecting more money in unemployment than most of our officers make. We risked being exposed to a virus that people didn’t know a whole lot about. We risked bringing this virus home to our Families as a result of going to work.  While we were doing this, our officers did an amazing job of carrying out brand new protocols on the fly, in order to keep our staff and offender population safe from this virus. The NDOC has one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 cases in United States prisons and almost all of the offender cases were because they recently came to our prisons from a county jail.  

      We as law enforcement have also recently been subjected to scrutiny by the public on an unprecedented level. Officers are spit on, degraded, getting human feces and urine thrown on them, having their cars vandalized, subject to the threat of prison riots, and all the while our officers show up to do what’s required to get the job done. We keep the element of society that haunts people’s dreams secured inside our prisons. We also keep offenders safe from themselves despite an increasing lack of support from the public. 

       I was here 11 years ago when pay cuts, furloughs, and other reductions took place. I can tell you that was an incredibly difficult time for the NDOC. We have a saying at work, “we have been doing so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” Our officers have met these recent challenges and now our reward is a loss in pay. I realize that these are very difficult times. I realize that all of you have very difficult decisions to make. I also know that what was instilled in me by my grandmother, who is born and raised in Las Vegas since 1938, is that where there is a will, there is a way.  

      In the most simplistic terms, there are 2 basic determining factors in the budget, revenue and expenses. We can offset any actual loss by increasing revenue and decreasing other expenses. There may be projections that suggest we are going to be short on money for the State of Nevada Budget, and there may even be some truth to those projections. However, casinos are opening up faster than expected, businesses are returning, sooner than expected, and our state may be returning sooner than expected. We have learned that a lot of state business can be done from home. Keep those State of Nevada Employees working from home. Then you can shut down buildings get out of the leases and reduce costs. We have learned that people continue to buy marijuana even in the face of economic and pandemic crisis. Increase the tax on marijuana and remove the limitations so that it may be used for state budget funding. Add or increase the tax on gasoline.  Add or increase alcohol tax. Increase room tax, increase gaming tax, and if necessary sales tax. What kind of federal aid packages can help? I personally submitted one of the federal law enforcement aid packages to our HR department. 

      There are countless other great ideas that state employees including yourselves have. The State of Nevada Employees including NDOC Officers, have faithfully served the people of the State of Nevada. We are the people of Nevada. We are proud citizens who have families and friends that value our contributions to this great state. On behalf of myself, all of the excellent NDOC Family that I work with, and our extended family of State of Nevada workers that we all depend on, I humbly ask for your careful consideration to avoid balancing the budget on the backs of State of Nevada Employees.

Most respectfully submitted, 

Paul Lunkwitz

President 

FOP Nevada C.O. Lodge 21