Lawmakers facing a busy Memorial Day weekend

Erin Neff

Monday, May 19, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- With just two weeks to go until the June 2 adjournment of the Legislature, lawmakers should know later this week if they will get to go home for good June 3.

Both the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees must close out the remaining budgets today in order to resolve differences and set the mechanics of drafting the budget bill in motion.

While that will grab the public spotlight, legislative leaders will continue to meet about taxes, hoping to find consensus between an $800 million floor and a $1.2 billion ceiling.

During the first weekend workday of the session, lawmakers plodded on with routine work, including passage of bills relating to education, annual legislative sessions and death penalty reform.

But the work day, which drew casual dress in the Assembly and plenty of lobbyists' children, was really just designed to prepare lawmakers for the tougher tasks ahead.

Next weekend, with work likely on Saturday, Sunday and Memorial Day, lawmakers will be talking taxes.

The so-called core group of lawmakers who tried to schedule private tax talks have abandoned the effort, in part because it stirred up those not invited and largely because other tax talks among leaders continue unabated.

This afternoon the Senate Taxation Committee was expected to add on to its original $730 million tax package by working on some type of increase to the business activity tax to put the total number over $800 million.

Meanwhile, as that tax proposal is set in motion, another tax plan -- one that more closely mirrors Gov. Kenny Guinn's proposal -- will be unveiled.

The Unified Business Tax will be the hallmark of a total tax plan that includes some of the other tax increases already proposed by Guinn.

The tax is essentially a replacement for the gross receipts tax, employing various methods of appeasing low-margin businesses that have complained the gross receipts levy is unfair.

The Assembly Taxation Committee is expected to unveil the Unified Business Tax this week.