Editorial: Statehouse becoming a playhouse

Friday, June 13, 2003 | 5:25 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: June 15, 2003

The 63 members of the Legislature had four months to resolve the most critical problem Nevada has faced in recent memory. The years of under-funding critical services such as education had finally caught up with the state. After spending four years studying every department, analyzing all expenditures and cutting millions from areas of the budget, Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn announced the need for up to $1 billion in new and increased taxes and submitted a detailed tax plan to the Legislature in the earliest days of the 2003 session. The Legislature's chief job this session was to debate Guinn's plan and then either approve it or modify it. The end result, however, had to be a plan that raised roughly the required amount of new revenue. And the increased tax burden had to be spread fairly among businesses and individual residents.

Instead of focusing on this critical job right from the start, however, the Legislature allowed nearly half the session to elapse before seriously discussing it. We all know what happened next. Empowered by the constitutional change in the mid-1990s that requires a two-thirds majority vote on all bills that would increase taxes, the Legislature's anti-tax faction coalesced into a little knot of naysayers. In their efforts to block tax increases against big businesses such as Wal-Mart and Bank of America, the faction succeeded in stalemating votes in the Senate and Assembly until the session ran out of time. Guinn immediately called a Special Session but the anti-tax legislators again blocked action. The Legislature adjourned Thursday having failed in its most important responsibility.

On June 25, just six days before the state's fiscal year ends, the Legislature will reconvene. There may be a miracle, but the prospect of the state heading into its new fiscal year without a spending plan appears possible. Chief among the victims will be school districts. Their whole operations, including service to year-round students, opening their schools on time and hiring teachers, will be thrown into uncertainty. We would not blame students and parents for lighting up the switchboards in Carson City nonstop until June 25.

The plain truth is that voters sent the legislators to Carson City to do a job and they haven't done it. Many of them chose loyalty to far-out political philosophies or special interests over loyalty to the state and to their constituents. Outspoken partisans of the naysayers are hailing them as "freshly minted heroes." We suggest those "heroes" need some freshly minted high chairs, diapers and pacifiers. After all, they're turning the statehouse into a playhouse.