Veterans say they are double taxed when purchasing special plates

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002 | 9:36 a.m.

Nevada veterans pay their taxes like everyone else, and they pay taxes a second time when they "donate" to the state veterans nursing home by purchasing state-issued veteran license plates.

Last fiscal year, veterans who paid $61 for the plates raised $97,000 "to support veterans homes," as the Department of Motor Vehicles website terms the donation.

But unlike other specialty license plates -- for the preservation and restoration of Lake Tahoe, for missing and exploited children and for educating children in the arts -- the money raised by veterans plates is absorbed into the state general fund to reduce the state's $4 million annual operating budget for the 180-bed Boulder City nursing home.

Other groups keep the money raised by the plates to spend as they please.

Veterans fought unsuccessfully to stem what they call an unfair drain on their accounts at the 2001 Legislature. Ray Heath, the former veterans home interim director, said he quit in part over frustration at his unsuccessful attempts to keep the money in an independent veterans gift account. And veterans plan to fight it again this spring with a bill draft supported by state Sen. Raymond Shaffer, D-North Las Vegas.

It's another example of why, even as the state's first veteran home begins accepting its first residents, some veterans continue to grumble privately that Carson City does not have the best interests of its veterans at heart.

"To buy a veterans plate is a conscious decision to make that donation to support the veterans homes. It says it right on the forms," Heath said. "We should be treated like other organizations with fiduciary funds generated by license plates. That's the spirit and intent of the law."

State lawmakers created the veterans plates in 1993, four years before they approved $19.3 million in construction funding for the veterans nursing home.

Records were not immediately available back to Oct. 18, 1994, the day plates officially went on sale. But since 1999, the plates have raised $209,000. Available records appear to indicate that all of that money has either gone to operating expenses at the home, or at year's end, reverted to the state's general account. The same could go for the $25,000 raised by the plates after July 1.

Chuck Fulkerson, executive director of the state Office of Veterans' Services, said the money should go to an account controlled by veterans, not the state.

"The money would not be used for any operating account. It would be for umbrellas for the patio, a big TV, a shark for the fishbowl. You know, that kind of thing. But it ain't going to pay the light bill," Fulkerson said.

Staff members at the home talk of buying handicapped accessible vans and trips on a Lake Mead paddlewheeler.

For now, though, the law only says that the license plate money may be spent for "the operation of veterans' homes." More recent laws passed for other specialty plates specifically prohibit the use of funds "to supplant or replace" funding from other sources, such as the general fund.

Sen. Shaffer said he is optimistic the wording of the law can be amended this spring. In 2001, a similar bill died in committee after being introduced by state Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas.

"I'm a veteran, a Marine. I served in Korea. So I have a deep stake in what is going on for Nevada's veterans," Shaffer said.

Shaffer added that state Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, is a veteran, too, and could be lobbied.