Cities’ leaders still can’t agree on tax compromise

Erin Neff

Friday, May 18, 2001 | 10:45 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Local governments once again spent the waning time before a legislative committee hearing trying to reach their own compromise on a controversial tax shift proposal.

And yet again they reported their futile attempts to Senate Taxation Chairman Mike McGinness, R-Fallon.

"We are not any closer than we were a week ago," Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson told the committee.

"We are not any closer than we were, and we understand that if there's a way to resolve it on our own, that's better," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said.

McGinness agreed, sending Southern Nevada's local governments away for another weekend of haggling over Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins' plan to change the way consolidated tax revenues are distributed.

Perkins, D-Henderson, argues that Assembly Bill 653 is the only way to bring faster-growing cities such as Henderson, North Las Vegas and Mesquite up to speed in regard to the revenue sharing, which he says has been unfairly benefiting Las Vegas and Clark County.

The bill would shift $4 million -- paid equally by Las Vegas and Clark County -- to Henderson and would also adjust the distribution formula by removing a consumer price index provision and a plus-one provision that equalizes the growth factor.

By removing both CPI and the plus-one factor, faster-growing cities believe they could begin to right a revenue ship that has been reeling out of their control since the distribution formula was changed in 1997.

But when negotiations began with local governments, Henderson and North Las Vegas reluctantly agreed to keep the CPI factor and to slowly phase out the plus-one provision over a four-year period.

The governments reportedly spent Thursday morning negotiating the $4 million base adjustment. Neither Clark County nor Las Vegas wants to pay its share of the base amount. Henderson has been crunching numbers related to the base that Gibson said Las Vegas and Clark County can live with.

Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, chuckled when Goodman reiterated that Las Vegas would like to try to resolve the issue without legislative action.

"Time's kind of on your side," Neal said, referring to Monday's deadline for bills to pass out of committee in the second house.

Cognizant of the deadline, McGinness ordered the local governments back to the table. He said his committee would be prepared to make a decision at 7 a.m. Monday, with or without a settlement.