Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Listen to business pros

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 4:29 a.m.

IF YOU WANT to know what the business community thinks, ask the people who mean business.

When Gov. Kenny Guinn gave us the State of the State address, he described Nevada's predicament as fragile. Without an increase in revenues -- read that taxes -- Nevada would fall even further down the ladder of unsuccessful states. In most quality-of-life criteria, our state ranks at or near the bottom, so Gov. Guinn has challenged the people of Nevada, through their legislators, to do what needs to be done. And that is the same thing many of our sister states will have to do very soon: Raise taxes.

One of the foundations of Guinn's more stable and broadly based tax structure is a very small tax on the gross revenues of businesses that exceed $450,000 in revenue. That means that some 60 percent of Nevada businesses will pay nothing at all under this structure and most of the rest will pay just a fraction of what their counterparts pay in every other state. Recent polls show that a large majority of the people support such a tax.

There are some in the business community, however, who haven't yet met a tax that they like. And this gross receipts tax is at the top of their list of hateful ideas. Some business people make responsible but unpersuasive cases why a tax on gross revenues, even one as ridiculously small as the one Guinn has proposed, should not be implemented. Most, however, make no sense, especially when there are no alternatives proffered that raise revenues from the businesses themselves and not just their customers.

Some of the naysayers include the heads of the biggest banks and financial institutions in Nevada. People who consider themselves, at least, to be good businessmen and women. Others who complain are people who have made a lot of money here and just plain old object to going from nothing to something in the taxpaying category.

Even though I have my own ideas about what is fair, just and equitable -- I sat as a member of the Governor's Task Force for Tax Policy -- I thought it best to ask the people who know business best in Nevada what the right answer should be. That's one of the reasons I went to the 2003 Nevada Business Hall of Fame dinner Thursday night. The other reason was to help pay tribute to three outstanding contributing members of our business community and the Nevada community at large.

The first honoree was Howard Hughes. For a very obvious reason -- Mr. Hughes has been dead for almost 27 years -- the bashful billionaire could not be present to acknowledge his induction into the Hall of Fame. The other two honorees were Claudine Williams and Irwin Molasky. Together with the first three inductees, Si Redd, E. Parry Thomas and Steve Wynn, Irwin and Claudine formed a nucleus of people who have given much to -- and taken relatively little from -- our state.

Their approach to doing business in Nevada and contributing to the well-being of the people who live, work and play here is the stuff about which Business 101 books are written and from which the real success stories come. In short, if you want to know how to do it right, in all aspects of being good business people and good citizens, you need look no further than to people like Claudine Williams, Irwin Molasky and the honorees from last year. In fact, the room at the MGM Grand was packed full of young, aspiring business people who, I suspect, would love to emulate the successes of those Hall of Famers.

Given the state of our state and the fragility by which it teeters on the brink of financial collapse, I asked those who were honored for their business acumen to comment on the governor's plan to raise taxes. Specifically, I wanted to know about the fairness and stability of the gross receipts tax. That's the one to which some of the wealthiest businesses in our state are opposed.

One would expect that business folks stick together, especially when the subject is taxes. That may be true for those who don't think past tomorrow and who are content to knee-jerk their way through life, but that is definitely not true about the people who have been honored for their business abilities.

To a person, Steve Wynn, Claudine and Irwin are convinced that Nevadans will be ill-served by a legislature that does not act responsibly by passing the governor's requested tax package. And I believe that if queried, Nevada's banker extraordinaire, Parry Thomas, would confirm his adherence to Kenny Guinn's proposals.

In short, those who think not only about the business of making money but also about doing what is good for business, overwhelmingly support Guinn's tax plan. In fact, Molasky can trace his support for a business tax back a decade or two when he co-chaired a study committee impaneled to recommend a way out of the state's fiscal problems so many years ago.

As Irwin explained the other night, if the Legislature had acted wisely in the 1980s, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today and we would be the envy of Americans across the country. As it is now, he explained, a failure to act in the best interests of the people of this state would spell disaster.

So while the debate rages in Carson City, and the politics of the moment try to overtake the responsible approach to sane government, it would behoove us all to pay heed to those who have earned their way into the Hall of Fame.

For once, Nevada, listen to those who have earned your highest respect. Listen and follow their lead. That is the way to a very bright future.