Wednesday, June 4, 2003 | 11:21 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- As the special session of the Legislature geared up Tuesday, Assembly Republicans were already planning to force a second special session.
On Tuesday, about 10 hours after the Legislature adjourned the 72nd session without the taxes to fund the budget, Gov. Kenny Guinn ordered lawmakers back to consider tax plans.
He did not put the state budget -- already approved by the Legislature -- on the agenda.
But lawmakers who voted against the state's appropriations bill as the regular session wound down said Tuesday afternoon that they cannot support $860 million in new revenue required to fund the $4.9 billion budget. They want to reopen the state budget to reduce the amount of new revenue required to $704 million at most.
"I really feel we have to look at that number," Assemblyman Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, said.
Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said he hopes to work with Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, "to go over the budget in the second special session."
It only takes a simple majority of both houses of the Legislature to pass the state budget. But it takes two-thirds of each house to approve new taxes. That distinction is noteworthy because the state budget passed in the Senate by a margin of 17 to 3 but only 24 to 18 in the Assembly. Because it takes as few as 15 opposition votes in the Assembly to kill a new tax, Hettrick said he believes he still has the votes among Assembly Republicans to kill any tax plan his caucus doesn't like.
He said this special session was the only way for Assembly Republicans "to be recognized."
On Las Vegas ONE's "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," Hettrick said he thought it was possible Guinn would have to call yet another special session, saying it didn't appear likely that a compromise could be reached anytime soon.
"I don't see how," Hettrick said. "There are not enough votes in my caucus to pass a $1 billion tax plan and $869 million in new spending."
Both Hettrick and Beers serve on the Ways and Means Committee, which examines the budget.
"We told them 60 days ago that $1.25 billion in new spending is too much," Beers said. "We told them that again two weeks ago and they didn't listen."
The current tax plan calls for $869 million in new revenue raised through taxes.
Hettrick told Ralston that his caucus preferred a plan to raise $600 million in new taxes, including lower rates than those proposed in other plans.
"We were pretty much left out of the operation," Hettrick said.
While Republicans in the Assembly are now balking, Democrats in both houses of the legislature and Senate Republicans continue to support the budget and the amount of new taxes required to fund it.
"People over here are willing to fund the budget," Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said.
Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said he thinks lawmakers "have an ethical obligation to fund the budgets they have approved."
"First and foremost, the appropriations bill passed with bipartisan and bicameral support," Perkins said. "We arrived at the $860 million number after a compromise. There were some people over $1 billion and some as low as $600 (million.)"
Hettrick said Tuesday he sees no way the Assembly can approve a tax package until the budget is reopened. A second special session is "almost inevitable," he said.
It would not be inexpensive. A second special session would cost up to $100,000 a day, officials said.
The special session that began Tuesday night is expected to cost $10,000 to $15,000 a day.
Throughout the regular session Guinn said he would convene lawmakers for an immediate special session if they were close to agreement. th. On Monday night polls of the Senate and Assembly found each house to be one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for passage of a tax plan.
If lawmakers do not reach agreement by Friday at 5 p.m. -- the time the governor proclaimed the session must end -- Guinn will have to convene another session.
Guinn has said he would bring lawmakers back to Carson City on June 29 and give them just one day to pass a tax plan before the end of the fiscal year.
"If there's no budget by July 1, government could shut down," the governor said.
Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, D-Las Vegas, serves on both the Ways and Means and Taxation committees and said she cannot understand why a vocal minority continues to question the budget number without offering any suggested cuts.
"Ask them if they want to be the prison guards when we don't have any employees anymore," McClain said.
Four Republicans sided with the Assembly Democrats on Monday, but failed to get a fifth for the 28 votes needed for passage.
One of those Republicans, Josh Griffin, R-Henderson, serves as assistant minority leader and is expected to announce today that he is stepping down from the post.
Griffin survived a coup attempt last week by a 10-9 vote in caucus.
Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said outspoken Republicans like Ron Knecht, R-Carson City, and Beers "are acting like spoiled children."
"Sometimes you don't get your way," Buckley said. "When you lose, you don't shut down state government."
This morning when the Legislature begins its first full day of work in the 19th special session, lawmakers will consider the Distributive School Account -- a $1.8 billion budget bill to fund K-12 education.
"Now is not the time for second-guessing," Nevada State Education Association President Terry Hickman said, urging lawmakers to fund the budget they have already agreed to pass. Exactly how lawmakers fund that budget continues to be in question.
Guinn expressed hope that the Nevada Legislature would reach a compromise by Friday to raise enough new taxes to run the state for the next biennium but a key lawmaker said he was skeptical.
Guinn was somewhat more upbeat, though he told Ralston that the number of broad-based business tax options has quickly narrowed. Guinn and Hettrick agreed that those options include a possible new net profits tax. Guinn has said that a broad-based business tax is a crucial part of any plan to give Nevada a more stable tax base.
"A net profits tax is certainly a broad-based tax for business," Guinn said. "A broad business tax needs to come about because it would be the salvation of this state.
"Every tax you bring about has some issues, whether it hurts big businesses or mom and pop businesses. Every tax has an evil."
Guinn said "it was too bad" that the various tax plans proposed by lawmakers this year weren't pieced together sooner.
"This is a very complex issue," he said. "It needs to have an intellectual thought process behind it."
Guinn said that it is time to put disregarded tax proposals back on the table, including plans that would tax payroll, net profits, services, retail sales and hotel rooms.
But Raggio said the unified business tax, a form of gross receipts tax that was supported by the gaming industry during the regular session, is off the table.
"Any form of a gross receipts tax is dead on arrival," Raggio said. "It's not going to happen."
Perkins disagreed, saying: "I don't think it's dead."
He pointed out that on Monday, there were 27 votes in the 42 member Assembly and 13 votes in the Senate for the tax plan that included the unified business tax -- two shy of the amount required for passage.
"My position hasn't changed one iota," Perkins said. "A broad-based business tax must be a part of any plan."
Perkins said he did not consider the payroll tax to be broad-based. "It's a tax on people's paychecks," he said.
The 21-member Senate will meet as a committee of the whole during the special session.
But in the Assembly, a 19-member committee will examine taxes. That committee is composed of 11 Democrats, picked by Perkins, and eight Republicans, selected by Hettrick.
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