Columnist Jon Ralston: Beers sets tone for debate

Friday, July 29, 2005 | 5:08 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 30-31, 2005

Bob Beers is doing the state a huge favor.

I don't expect many people will realize it right away, especially his opponents in the governor's race. But what became clear at a speech Beers gave last week is that the state senator who would be governor is starkly defining Nevada's philosophical divide and asking people to line up on either side.

Beers, by seeking the state's highest office, also is capitalizing on a trend in Nevada, which may reach critical mass during Campaign '06, that favors initiative-imposed solutions grafted onto a system of representative government. This kind of major political surgery continues an insidious trend toward direct democracy, where vocal minorities and well-funded special interests can hold sway. This may be an inevitable consequence of a political elite that cowers or dissembles when asked to confront systemic state problems, but it could result in severe post-operative complications.

Beers' incipient campaign -- as well as Assemblywoman Sharron Angle's quest for Congress -- will test whether one (or perhaps two) resonating ideas are enough to fundamentally alter the state's course and elect those willing to piggyback on them.

Beers' unnoticed speech last week was to the Nevada chapter of the American Society of Public Administrators -- that is, a bunch of government folks who are inherently hostile to many of his ideas, especially his subject du jour, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR).

The Beers/TABOR road show, which features the senator commenting on a slide presentation, is succinct and compelling. Beers uses the specific -- Colorado's TABOR experience -- to illuminate the general -- accepted shibboleths about state spending that he believes mask the reality.

Beers began by describing just what TABOR does in Colorado, where 54 percent voted to enact the spending restraint measure in 1992. It limits to population growth plus inflation the amount state and local governments can spend. If taxes come in above that number, rebates must be given. Beers described "the ratchet effect," which is when the baseline for increases is lowered because revenues fall below the cap imposed by TABOR.

That scenario is now playing out in Colorado, where recessionary pressures have forced Republican Gov. Bill Owens and legislators to reach a compromise that would ask voters in November to allow them to retain $3.1 billion over five years that would otherwise be refunded to taxpayers.

Beers touted Colorado's first-in-the-nation job growth since TABOR was enacted and said that Colorado and one other state were the only ones in the West that did not have lower revenue in the budget cycle after 9/11.

That other state was Nevada. And Beers pointed out one of the enduring conservative pet peeves about how the media and government use the phrase "budget cuts." Regular folks think it means reduced spending, but the media and government types define it as "'planning to spend a whole bunch more" but then having to reduce the increase, Beers said.

You mean the spending advocates can be disingenuous, too? I'm shocked.

Beers also mocked the continual references in the media to Nevada's "unstable" revenue base, which has been the pretext for substantive as well as politically driven efforts during the last decade and a half to broaden the base and increase taxes. Beers, who delights in showing how Nevada government has increased its spending, said the state has "one of the most stable taxation systems in America and we should strengthen it, not weaken it." How? You guessed it.

"TABOR may be the only thing that can stop Nevada state and local governments from becoming a 'whopper,' " blares one of the final slides in the Beers presentation. And thus the gauntlet comes down, especially since Beers says he would impose TABOR as governor in 2007 even though it would need to pass again on the 2008 ballot to be embedded in the Constitution.

Beers faced a few penetrating questions from the government types at the ASPA luncheon, especially from a couple of longtime social service advocates. But Beers parried all of them with his clipped answers and his wry humor. This is one anti-politician who is a very skilled politician.

I was struck as I listened to Beers that as he and Angle push for TABOR next year -- and as she tries to enact a Proposition 13 property tax rollback despite the new cap just passed -- that he must be given credit for giving the other side a chance to speak up.

Just as fellow gubernatorial contender Jim Gibbons used an eponymous tax restraint initiative to gain popularity, Beers is saying to the other gubernatorial contenders: Do you or do you not support TABOR?

How many, I wonder, will say they don't, arguing that the fastest-growing state in the country with a vulnerable tourism-based economy is not Colorado? In that state, the crisis is exacerbated by other mandates, including something called Amendment 23, which mandates certain increases in school spending. As Jerry Groswold, a member of a Colorado economic panel, wrote in the Denver Post in February about what that state's initiative mania has wrought:

"This entire approach has not only created a complex and confusing fiscal system that is difficult to predict and impossible to adjust in changing economic times, it has led to the concept of special interest tax legislation and constitutional mandates. That has removed the ability and the responsibility for our elected officials to deal effectively with budget and funding issues. When we tie the legislature's hands in dealing with state finances, we kill the concept of representative government."

In that sense, if the other gubernatorial contenders aren't willing to join the debate Beers wants to have, Nevada is about to look very much like Colorado.