Columnist Jon Ralston: Leaders leave a legacy of lunacy

Friday, June 1, 2001 | 2:55 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

CARSON CITY -- Carole Vilardo is not known for being a cut-up. But the intense executive director of the Nevada Taxpayers Association, who has an encyclopedic and exhaustive knowledge of state tax policy, had to see the humor in the letter she sent to money committee members Friday.

The missive, which she knew was fruitless, was sent to express her organization's opposition to the use of triggers in the education budget -- the last piece of fiscal chicanery affixed to a dishonest, disingenuous and delusional budget process. Putting in triggers for operational expenses -- that is, setting revenue goals that must be met to fund programs and a piece of legislative legerdemain supposedly banned several sessions ago -- is "very simply bad fiscal policy."

As opposed to the rest of what's happening here. And occurs every two years, right at this time. Now, penning this column two days before you are reading it is fraught with danger as the situation changes almost hourly in the madness of the biennial careening toward sine die. But my guess is that if anything has changed, it will have been for the worst and that no epiphany will strike anyone that this is an abdication of responsibility and shows a true lack of leadership from those who run the state. No, I don't think that's likely.

So this session, so far as the money game goes, will end with the same kind of lunacy as in past Legislatures -- only the degree of dysfunction changes. This time, in a final triumph for the state's business community this session, in exchange for allowing secretary of state fees to be slightly bumped up to provide pay increases for teachers, the chamber types and their allies wanted to insulate corporate directors from punishment.

In a session where the business folks have held off any broad-based tax proposal, despite many promises months ago, why shouldn't they see just how far they can go? It's worked for the gamers all these years -- and it seems hubris is contagious here.

It's not enough for the business community to block any meaningful tax plan to fund not just education, but the entire state budget. It's not enough that they make phony arguments about businesses fleeing the state should any new fees or taxes be imposed. But these broad-minded, reasonable folks actually have tried to make the case here that if transaction fees are raised slightly to put a Band-Aid on the budget, then the carnage on the corporations in Nevada will be so overwhelming that they would only stay if their directors are made immune from lawsuits.

This is a real argument being made up here last week, folks. It is insane, but no more so than the entire approach to this issue and the incongruous and illogical linking of teacher pay raises and corporate director liability.

Does anyone actually believe that in a state with no corporate income tax and no personal income tax that businesses will flee Nevada because some fees were boosted to raise a paltry $29 million. Please.

As all the business types mouth their shibboleths about accountability and merit pay, do any of them consider that one reason that corporate titans might not want to locate here is because national studies show the lower education system here is subpar? Think that might be affecting those decisions?

I can imagine the quality businesses we'll be attracting who watch the developments here, producing these kinds of mindsets in their boardrooms:

"We don't care about the quality of education in the state. But if they pass that law to restrict corporate director liability, that would sure help us out."

That's a sure way to attract quality businesses to Nevada: Keep the education system underfunded, but keep businesses out of the tax loop and free from concerns about shareholder lawsuits.

Vilardo is correct that triggers are a gimmick. But compared to the legislative necromancy being practiced as the session winds down, that is, very simply, laughable.