Nevadans willing to spend more on many state programs

Sandra Chereb

Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1999 | 4:23 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Nevadans are willing to spend more on state programs to help victims, the elderly and to improve K-12 education. And when asked how to pay for it, a majority favor higher taxes on casinos.

Those are some of the findings of the 1998 "Nevada Poll" conducted by researchers at the University of Nevada in Reno and Las Vegas and released Tuesday.

"Nevadans describe themselves as either moderate or conservative on economic issues, yet are quite generous in their willingness to spend more on existing state-funded programs," said Judy Calder, director of the Alan Bible Center for Applied Research at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The random telephone survey of 1,256 Nevadans was conducted from October through December by researchers at the Alan Bible Center and the Cannon Center for Survey Research at UNLV. Statewide results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

Poll results were also broken into three regions - Southern Nevada, or Clark County; Northern Nevada encompassing Washoe, Carson City and Douglas counties; and rural areas, or all other counties. Regional results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

The poll is conducted every two years before legislative sessions to gauge public opinion on state spending, taxation and other pertinent issues.

"Essentially what we've seen ... is ongoing stability" in Nevadans' attitudes over the years, Calder said.

But Calder and Grace Woo of UNLV noted some exceptions, such as increased statewide opposition to permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and the number of people who claim no political party affiliation.

Statewide, 75 percent of Nevadans oppose the federal government's Yucca Mountain plan, up 2 percent over 1996 and 11 percent over 1994 poll findings, researchers found.

"This is a significant change," Calder said, adding that it disproves early predictions by some that Nevadans' opposition would wane.

Respondents who selected their political party affiliation as "none" rose from 9 percent in 1996 to 17 percent, the report said.

And for the first time, results also showed a decline in the willingness to spend more in some areas. Most notable was a 15 percent decrease over 1996 in the percentage of respondents who support added spending for mental health programs.

Support for increased funding for law enforcement and drug treatment programs both fell 5 percent from 1996 results.

While nearly half of respondents said Nevada should spend less on payments to welfare recipients, 78 percent expressed a willingness to spend more on job training to help recipients get a job. Only 10 percent said more should be spent on welfare payments. Forty-three percent said less should be spent and 37 percent said spending should remain the same.

Child abuse prevention topped the list of issues for which Nevadans said state spending should be increased, with 81 percent favoring added funding.

Other issues for which more spending was favored included programs for low-income elderly, 80 percent; combating juvenile gang crime, 78 percent; programs for domestic violence victims, 71 percent; child care for welfare recipients in job training, 69 percent; police training in domestic violence.

In education, 68 percent favored increased spending on K-12, and 65 percent said more should be spent on teacher salaries. In contrast, only 50 percent favored more overall funding for community colleges and universities, and only 37 percent supported more for higher education salaries.

When asked how programs they favored should be paid for if more state revenues were necessary, a majority of respondents, or 69 percent, favored higher taxes on the gambling industry. That was followed by increased cigarette and liquor taxes, 65 percent; a corporate profits tax, 61 percent; a state lottery, 57 percent; mining tax increase, 46 percent; and increased business activity tax, 43 percent.

Not surprisingly, respondents shunned increases in taxes that hit their own wallets the hardest, such as sales, gasoline and property taxes.