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SB119: Tempting Conservatives with
Forbidden Fruit
by Chuck Muth
February 27, 2015
Why can’t
liberals – including liberal Republicans – just take “no” for an answer?
In 2009 Nevada
was in an economic crisis thanks to the Great Recession and the Legislature’s
refusal to make the tough decisions that corporate America was already making:
downsizing their work forces, reducing costs and cutting non-essential
expenditures.
Workers in the
private sector didn’t like it. Why
should they? But it was necessary for
many businesses to stay in business.
The real question,
though, is why government workers should have been exempted from the same type
of pain as workers in the private sector who pay the salaries of the workers in
the public sector.
Nevertheless, the
Legislature in 2009 refused to make the tough decisions on the spending side
and instead approved a “temporary” package of tax hikes in the neighborhood of
$640 million which were supposed to expire in 2011.
But in 2011 the
Legislature and Gov. Brian Sandoval broke their word to the people of Nevada
and extended those “temporary” tax hikes for another two years rather than let
them “sunset” as promised.
In 2013, the
Legislature and Gov. Sandoval broke their word to the people of Nevada yet
again, and extended the “sunsets” for another two years.
It’s now
2015. The economic crisis that was used
as the excuse to pass that package of tax hikes has long since subsided. But instead of letting the “sunsets” finally sunset,
Gov. Sandoval now wants to make them permanent.
And the
Legislature is likely to go along with it despite GOP control for the first
time since 1929.
But this isn’t
the only example of legislative funny business, including outright deception,
when it comes to tax hikes.
THE MORE COPS TWO-STEP
In 2004, when
economic times were booming in Nevada, voters in Clark County approved a tax
hike to put more cops on the street – with a caveat. Half now, half later if approved by the
Legislature.
By 2012,
economic circumstances had clearly changed.
The boom times had gone bust. And
clearly there was no appetite for the second half of that eight-year-old tax
hike among citizens of the state with the highest unemployment rate in the
nation.
Knowing they
couldn’t get the 2/3 super-majority vote needed to approve the second half of the
“more cops” tax hike in the Legislature, legislators used a little
sleight-of-hand to circumvent the tax restraint law by passing the buck for approving the tax hike to
local county commissioners.
The Legislature
pulled the same fast one in Washoe County over a tax hike for school
construction.
With strong
opposition from their hard-pressed local constituents, commissioners in both
counties just said “no.”
But once again
liberals in both parties just won’t take “no” for an answer. And legislators in Carson City are once again
trying to circumvent the people in order to give the government more money.
IT'S "FOR THE CHILDREN," OF COURSE
School construction
bonds funded through property taxes are approved by a vote of the people for 10-year
periods. However, voters have been
rejecting new bond requests at the ballot box in light of the lingering effects
of the Great Recession.
So what have
the tax-hikers proposed to do this session?
SB119 would
allow the school districts to automatically extend those 10-year bonds for an
additional 10 years WITHOUT a new vote of the people. It’s being called a “bond rollover.”
So instead of
taxpayers getting the promised tax relief at the end of the 10-year period as
agreed to by the voters, they’ll get stuck with the tax hike for an additional
10-year period.
Victor Joecks
of the Nevada Policy Research Institute estimates that this ploy - if approved
by legislators behind the voters’ backs – “would cost taxpayers, specifically
in Clark and Washoe County, between $3 to 4 billion, before including billions
in interest costs.”
Naturally, no
self-respecting fiscal conservative would go along with such a scheme to put
property tax hikes on auto-pilot.
A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
So liberal
Republicans crafted a scheme to entice conservatives to take a bite from this
forbidden fruit. They’ve added to the
bill a provision that would temporarily end a union welfare program called “prevailing
wage.”
The prevailing
wage law requires taxpayers to pay wages on government construction projects
that are significantly higher than they would pay on the open, private-sector
market. If SB119 is approved, school
construction projects would temporarily be exempted from the prevailing wage
requirement – a significant savings for taxpayers.
Including the prevailing
wage exemption in the bond rollover bill is a sneaky way for liberal
Republicans to tempt conservatives in the Assembly to vote for a massive effort
to increase property taxes without approval by the voters who will have to pay
the higher property taxes.
Conservatives
legislators should not fall for this temptation and refuse to bite from the apple.
They should just
say “no” because “no,” in this instance, is the right answer.
And because
sprinkling a little sugar on a turd sandwich doesn’t make the turd sandwich
something other than a turd sandwich.
THE CONSERVATIVE ALTERNATIVE
Repealing the
prevailing wage law is, indeed, the right thing to do. But it should be done for ALL taxpayer-funded
government construction projects, not just schools. And it should be done in a bill completely
separate from the automatic bond-rollover bill.
If there is a “need”
to build more schools – and I, for one, reject that claim - then make that case
to the voters and let the voters decide if they want to pay for it. There is no
reason in the world to take this decision out of the hands of the people who
will have to pay the bill.
As for the
argument that our schools are overcrowded, there’s a far better and cheaper way
to alleviate the problem than jacking up property taxes by billions of dollars:
targeted school vouchers.
Legislators
should immediately approve offering $5,000 vouchers to parents whose children
are in overcrowded schools if they’ll pull their kid out of the overcrowded
school and enroll him or her in a private school of the parents’ choice.
In this way,
not only will the overcrowding problem disappear almost overnight with no tax
hike on property owners, but the cost of public education would actually go
down since Nevada currently spends about $9,000 per child to educate him or her
in a public school.
But there’s no
way on God’s green earth that legislators, backed by the teachers union, will
ever even remotely consider this option unless FORCED to by killing SB119 as
approved by the state Senate.
Republicans in the
Assembly should just say “no,” because saying “no” is the right answer.
You can read this column online, as well as access archives
of past Muth's Truths columns by clicking here... www.MuthsTruths.com
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