RoboTax’s Stunning Passage: Who Screwed
the Taxpayers?
By Chuck Muth
March 5, 2015
Unless I’ve
been misinformed, RoboTax…a bill to extend temporary voter-approved tax hikes for
school construction without letting the voters themselves vote on the extension…has
been approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
As I know some members of the Assembly
are waiting for this, let me state that it is my opinion that a vote now on
SB119 is no longer an effort to increase taxes and would NOT be a violation of
the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
Let me explain…
WARNING: If you have a weak stomach and sausage-grinding
makes you physically ill, read no further!
SB119 was
passed in the Nevada State Senate. It
included two parts…
The first part
provided local school districts with the ability to automatically extend
voter-approved 10-year bonds, backed by temporary property tax hikes, for the
purpose of school construction.
The second part
of the bill repealed a provision in state law – “prevailing wage” - requiring
the payment of inflated union wages on the construction of those school
projects.
The bill passed
in the Senate – with all Republicans voting in favor. And all Democrats voting in opposition
because of the prevailing wage poison pill.
The bill then
was sent over to the lower house where a number of Republicans wanted to vote
to gut the prevailing wage law and felt that was sufficient enough reason to
take away the right of taxpayers to decide for themselves whether or not they
wanted to extend the 10-year billion dollar property tax hikes.
But as I tried
to explain over and over, just because you add a little sugar to a cup of
coffee doesn’t mean it’s not still a cup of coffee.
And just
because you add a prevailing wage repeal provision to a billion dollar tax hike
doesn’t mean it’s not still a billion dollar tax hike and a violation of the
Taxpayer Protection Pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to
increase taxes.”
Anyway, SB119 came
up for a vote in committee in the Assembly this week. And conservative Assemblyman John Moore voted with the Democrats to
kill it.
The Democrats
wanted to kill it because of the prevailing wage provision. Assemblyman Moore wanted to kill it because
it was a billion dollar property tax increase that bypassed the voters who
approved it in the first place. And with
Moore’s vote, the bill died in committee.
Assemblyman
Moore is a Taxpayer Hero in this story.
But liberal Republicans
who wanted this tax hike were ENRAGED.
In fact,
liberal Assembly Republican Majority Leader Paul
Anderson called Moore out of his committee meeting and paraded him to a
nearby stairwell where he, literally, read the freshman conservative the proverbial
“riot act.”
According to a
complaint later filed by Moore with legislative police, Anderson got in his
face, “pointing his finger at me,” and declaring, “You are done, dead, you’re
finished!”
As Moore tried
to leave the stairwell, Anderson reportedly slammed the door shut and “stood in
front of the door and would not let me out.”
Assemblyman
Anderson is a bully. And a Taxpayer Zero
in this story.
After filing
his complaint with legislative police, Moore returned to his committee and the
committee held a new vote on SB119. This
time, instead of voting to pass the bill, the committee voted to simply send it
to the full Assembly for consideration without a recommendation one way or the
other.
Once the bill
got to the full Assembly, a new plan was going to be pushed by conservative
Republicans to add the Joeck’s Amendment.
Named after
conservative stalwart Victor Joeck’s
of the Nevada Policy Research Institute who originally proposed it, the Joeck’s
amendment would have extended the temporary property tax hikes only until
November 2016 when the voters who voted on the original tax hikes would be
afforded the opportunity to vote on whether or not to extend them an additional
10 years.
While this short
extension would have technically been an effort to increase taxes temporarily,
in reality it was an effort to let the taxpayers themselves make the ultimate
decision in the next scheduled election.
As such, we wouldn’t have raised a stink about it and wouldn’t have
rated the bill.
Victor Joecks
is a Taxpayer Hero.
Enter Senate Field
Marshall Moderate Mike Roberson…
The last thing
Roberson – a RINO’s RINO (Republican in Name Only) – wanted was to let the
people who would have to pay the billion dollar tax hike have a say on the
billion dollar tax hike. Especially
since those taxpayers have been consistently voting down similar tax hike
proposals over recent years.
So deciding
that the definition of an “emergency” is whatever he says it is, Roberson
introduced on Wednesday a new bill, SB207, which would automatically extend the
bond rollovers – the RoboTax – but without the prevailing wage provision that
Democrats so virulently opposed.
As an “emergency”
bill, no committee hearing was conducted in the Senate. Instead, SB207 went straight to a vote on the
floor. And now that it was nothing more
than a straight-up tax hike, every Democrat voted for it.
Only four
Republicans voted against the RoboTax 2.0.
The Taxpayer Heroes on this one were Sens. Don Gustavson, Pete Goicoechea, Mark Lipparelli and James Settelmeyer.
To be fair,
however, those four did, in fact, vote for RoboTax 1.0, so their record isn’t
exactly pristine in this mess. The four
thought that adding a little sugar to coffee meant the coffee was no longer
coffee.
The Republican
Taxpayer Zeroes who voted for RoboTax 1.0 AND 2.0 in the Senate were Moderate Mike Roberson, Greg Brower,
Patricia Farley, Becky Harris, Scott Hammond, Joe Hardy and Ben Kieckhefer.
So SB207 moved
over to the Assembly…where Republican Assembly Speaker-of-the-Weak John Hambrick, if he had any balls, would have killed the bill by
simply exercising his Speaker powers to prevent the bill from even coming up
for a vote.
And that would
have allowed a vote on the conservative alternative with the Joeck’s amendment.
But no. In violation of his written and signed Taxpayer
Protection Pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase
taxes,” Hambrick not only allowed SB207 to come up for a vote on the Assembly
floor, he actually voted for it!
Hambrick is a
Taxpayer Zero.
Let the recall continue…with
renewed vigor!
Of course, without
the prevailing wage poison pill, all 17 Assembly Democrats also voted for the new
bill.
And nine other Republicans
in the Assembly also voted for SB207.
They were Paul Anderson, Derek
Armstrong, Pat Hickey (of course), Randy
Kirner, Erv Nelson, Victoria Seaman (breaking her own Tax Pledge), Stephen Silberkraus, Lynn Stewart and Melissa Woodbury.
Taxpayer Zeroes
all.
Now here’s the
thing…
I’m told the governor
has signed SB207 into law even though it wasn’t reflected on the Legislature’s
website this morning at the time I wrote this. And if so…
I’ve been told
by Victor Joecks’s that it’s the position of legal counsel at the Legislative
Counsel Bureau that if the Assembly now votes to pass SB119, which has already
been passed by the Senate, the property tax hike portion of the bill is now,
essentially, null and void with the passage and approval of SB207.
As such, a vote
on SB119 now is effectively ONLY on the prevailing wage portion of the
bill.
So conservatives
and Tax Pledge signers in the Assembly can now vote FOR SB119 with a
clear conscience.
If approved by
the Assembly, it would then go to Gov. Brian
Sandoval for his signature. And it will be VERY interesting to see
if “America’s Worst Governor” signs a pure prevailing wage repeal law.
I’m betting he
won’t. Once a RINO, always a RINO.
Make no
mistake. This RoboTax issue was a tough
one. And tough votes don’t make
conservatives; they reveal them.
It was no
accident that Victor Joecks was Citizen Outreach’s “Conservative Rising Star”
award recipient a couple years ago. This
is one sharp guy.
And Assemblyman
Moore just made himself a leading contender for this year’s “Conservative of
the Year” award.
Now if you’ll
pardon me, my daughter Jenna and I are heading down to the docks at San Diego
harbor for a little whale-watching excursion this morning. Carry on, legislators…
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