On 28 April 2026 the Nye County sheriff sat at the commission table and said the jail was missing seven million dollars.
Sheriff Joe McGill reported "a significant budget shortfall of roughly $7,000,000 for the Nye County Detention Center." County-wide, he put the figure at "approximately $13 million."
He did not blame a department. He asked for outside help.
He asked that it go to two state bodies. The State Comptroller's Office and the Nevada Division of Investigation. His words were "a thorough and complete investigation to include a forensic audit as to the shortfall and where it went."
You can read the whole meeting. We hold the minutes as a searchable record, turn by turn, so you do not have to take our word for any line of this.
What the minutes show since
The four months after that are worth reading together.
No revenue. At the meeting on 18 August, the commission was told plainly: "last year we funded the jail by seven and a half million dollars. There is no revenue." Read it.
The debt. On 21 July the commission was told the county carries a revenue bond for the jail of $14,000,760. Read it.
What the neighbours pay. On 4 August the commission approved an agreement letting Esmeralda County house its inmates in Nye's jail. The rate is $127.84 per inmate per day. County staff said on the record that this is "well below the actual costs." Read it.
Children go to Clark County. Nye County has no juvenile detention centre. It pays Clark County $350 per day, per juvenile, under an agreement running from July 2026 to July 2031. The chief juvenile probation officer told the commission this on 18 June. Read it.
Tonopah closed. The county used to hold people in two places. The comptroller told the commission on 27 May that 2026 was the first year with all detention in Pahrump. Ending detention in Tonopah was a decision. Transport costs came with it. Read it.
The part that has happened before
On 21 April, Sheriff McGill told the commission the jail's hole was not made on his watch.
"This upside-downness in the jail is not on us, it's not on me," he said. He then described an earlier plan, under a previous sheriff, to hold federal prisoners in the north of the county.
The plan came "back with a promise that the feds were going to pay us money for housing prisoners up there, and we were going to make all this money. Well, that flopped, and we didn't make money; we lost money on that." Read that meeting.
A jail that holds other people's prisoners for money is not a new idea here. It has been tried. The county's own sheriff says it lost money.
The comparison nobody made out loud
There is another lock-up in this county, and it does not have this problem.
The Nevada Southern Detention Center is private. CoreCivic runs it for the federal government. Its contract guarantees payment for 750 beds whether or not anyone is in them, and the total is $122,250,660. The daily rate is redacted from the public copy.
So one lock-up in this county has a guaranteed income and a secret price. The other has no revenue and a $14 million bond. It charges a rate out loud, and its own staff say that rate does not cover the cost.
We have put both facilities on one page, with the documents.
What happens next
The sheriff asked for a state forensic audit in April. We have found no record of one being opened. If a record exists, we want it.
If you work for the county, at the jail, or in finance, and you know what happened to that money, tell us. We publish documents, and we protect people who send them.
Sources
Every quote above is from the county's own minutes, which we hold in full and which you can read yourself:
- 28 April 2026, Sheriff McGill on the shortfall
- 21 April 2026, Sheriff McGill on the earlier federal prisoner plan
- 27 May 2026, the comptroller on Tonopah
- 18 June 2026, juvenile detention costs
- 21 July 2026, the jail bond
- 4 August 2026, the Esmeralda County agreement
- 18 August 2026, "there is no revenue"
- Our page on both Nye County lock-ups
