Editorial: Gibbons’ misplaced attention

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 | 9 a.m.

Jim Gibbons, who led the successful drive in the mid-1990s to amend Nevada's Constitution so that taxes can only be raised if at least two-thirds of the Legislature approves, is at it again. The Republican congressman will sponsor a voter initiative that would force the Legislature to fund public education before the rest of the state budget is considered. His proposal is in response to the Nevada Supreme Court's decision that the Legislature can use a simple majority, instead of a two-thirds vote, to raise taxes to fund the state budget, which includes money for public schools. The Supreme Court found that a constitutional right to a public education had been jeopardized because of the Legislature's inability to pass a balanced budget by a two-thirds vote. The decision to void the supermajority requirement now is before Nevada's federal judges, who will d etermine whether the court's decision was constitutional.

Gibbons believes that if his "Education First" initiative passes, education would not become the victim of political gamesmanship as happened in the Legislature this year. He says education would get the priority -- and the funding -- it deserves. Currently Nevada ranks near the bottom in education funding compared to other states. Gibbons, a former state assemblyman, says it's a "disgrace." Indeed, public schools have been woefully underfunded for years now, but the reason for this is the resistance by some business groups and right-wing legislators who have opposed tax increases to pay for education spending. The real problem this year hasn't been the order in which we fund education, it's been that an unyielding band of Assembly Republicans has held the education budget hostage as they tried to get a tax plan -- or huge budget cuts elsewhere in governme nt -- to their liking. The reason why they have such power to block tax increases, which could properly fund education, is ! because it was Gibbons' own tax restraint initiative that requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes.

We believe that the Legislature's top priority should be to fund education, but Gibbons' initiative is not the answer. Creating a bureaucratic mechanism so that funding for education occurs first doesn't automatically mean that it will receive top priority -- and it could have the unintended consequence of reducing education's share of state funding. "The first to the trough usually gets the least," Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, who is a public school teacher, explained to the Reno Gazette-Journal in a story last week. "To make education the first budget passed would mean that (it) would have to be very frugal. You would not be able to get any extra cushion for special education, gifted and talented programs, transportation costs and other things."

Instead of getting himself involved in the intricacies of Nevada's budget process, we'd rather see the congressman focus on his day job in Washington. This is the same Jim Gibbons who voted to repeal the federal estate tax. As the Sun's Cy Ryan reminded readers Monday, that change has resulted in a $90 million hole in our state's budget for public schools and the University and Community College System of Nevada. Gibbons says he'll work to pass legislation, through increasing education's take from the sale of federal lands in Nevada, to make up for that loss. But that is something that should have been done at the time the estate tax was repealed -- not sometime later.

Gibbons denies the initiative is a political move, but the whiff of politics is strong as he contemplates a run against Democratic Sen. Harry Reid in 2004. (It should be remembered, however, that the tax restraint initiative's presence on the ballot in 1994 didn't help Gibbons in his bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Bob Miller -- Gibbons was beaten badly.) The bottom line is that it was Gibbons' initiative from the 1990s that created this year's impasse over the budget. Now Gibbons says he has a plan to prevent such a mess in the future. Does anyone else see the irony in all of this?