FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: rserrano@axiomstrategies.com

LAS VEGAS – Nevada State Treasurer candidate Drew Johnson today released a three-part plan to save Nevada’s Governor Guinn Millennium Scholarship program. Johnson’s plan reforms future eligibility, protects students already counting on the program, and dedicates a portion of residual unclaimed-property revenue to a permanent scholarship endowment.

The Governor Guinn Millennium Scholarship provides eligible Nevada high school graduates up to $10,000 in tuition assistance to attend qualifying Nevada colleges and universities, including the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the state’s community colleges.

About $38 million in Millennium Scholarship funds are awarded in a typical year. But the scholarship fund is expected to fall to approximately $21.1 million by the end of FY2027. That insolvency will strip the scholarship from 10,600 current students.

By 2028, the program will be bankrupt, unable to pay for any scholarships because of incompetence and mismanagement by the program’s director and Johnson’s opponent for State Treasurer, Tya Mathis-Coleman.

“The Millennium Scholarship is one of Nevada’s best ideas, but its survival cannot depend on taxpayer bailouts,” Johnson said. “We can honor our promise to current students, restore the scholarship as a meaningful merit award, and build a financial structure that can support it for generations.”

Johnson’s plan to save the Governor Guinn Millennium Scholarship program has three parts:

1. Restore merit. Beginning with the 2028-29 graduating class, eligibility would generally go to students in the top 20 percent of each qualifying Nevada high school class who complete the required core curriculum and earn at least a 3.0 unweighted core GPA. Scholarship recipients would then need to maintain a 3.0 college GPA to remain eligible.

   The plan would include fair, objective alternatives for homeschool students and other students who do not receive a traditional class ranking.

2. Protect current students and set reasonable limits. Students who have already qualified would be grandfathered. Future recipients would have four years, rather than six, to use the scholarship, with a limit of eight semesters or 120 credits, while keeping the current $10,000 lifetime cap and reasonable exceptions for military service, disability, and medical hardship.
3. Build permanent funding. Nevada would keep the existing tobacco-settlement funding and current $7.6 million annual unclaimed-property transfer. After valid owner claims, program costs, and other statutory obligations are satisfied, 25 percent of the remaining unclaimed-property money that would otherwise automatically be swept into the General Fund would instead support the Millennium Scholarship.

During the transition, that revenue would help stabilize the program, ensuring existing recipients continue to receive their scholarships. Once the program is financially stable, excess revenue would be invested in a permanent Millennium Scholarship endowment, creating an increasingly reliable source of investment income to help fund scholarships for future generations.

The plan would not raise taxes, and all unclaimed property funds would remain fully available for their rightful owners to claim at any time.

Johnson contrasted his proposal with the record and approach of his opponent, Mathis-Coleman.

“Tya Mathis-Coleman has bungled the Millennium Scholarship for 6 years. Her gross mismanagement has left tens of thousands of Nevada’s most promising students wondering if they’ll receive the scholarships they were counting on,” Johnson said. “She has had plenty of time to produce a serious, long-term solution, and we still don’t have one.”

Mathis-Coleman said she would attempt to save the scholarship by asking taxpayers to fund additional bailouts and trying to shake down private businesses to support the scholarship.

“Another taxpayer bailout might keep Millennium alive for a few more years. A few corporate donations might help around the edges. But neither is a mature, responsible solution that fixes the fundamental problem: the scholarship is promising more money than its recurring revenues can sustain,” Johnson said.

“As Treasurer, I will protect the Millennium Scholarship for current students, ensure it is reserved for Nevada’s best and brightest students, and put it on a financial foundation built to last for generations — all without asking Nevada’s already struggling taxpayers to foot the bill.”

Drew Johnson is the Republican nominee for Nevada State Treasurer. He has spent his career in government finance and as a government watchdog exposing waste, fraud, and abuse and fighting to save taxpayers billions of dollars. He intends to continue fighting to protect taxpayers as Nevada’s Treasurer.

For more information about Drew Johnson’s campaign for Nevada State Treasurer, visit DrewForNevada.com.

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