Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Jon Ralston: Guinn’s legacy is at stake

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 [email protected].

WEEKEND EDITION

May 7 - 8, 2005

Two years ago, an apolitical governor twice eschewed politics by proposing the largest tax increase in history and then refusing to use the power of his office to sell it to the public or the Gang of 63.

Kenny Guinn bravely foresaw the state's great need for more money and refused to let his party's right wing be his lodestar. But instead of building bridges with lawmakers, he set them afire from Day One, thus heralding the political conflagration to come, and then ran from the blaze like an arsonist trying to escape culpability.

Now, as a $1 billion tax increase has metamorphosed into a $2 billion spending spree, the apolitical governor has turned political, mounting a campaign for what he calculatingly calls "the people's rebate," desperately seeking a legacy and trying to save lawmakers from themselves. Once vilified as a Democrat in Republican clothing sheepishly pushing a tax increase onto the stage and then displaying the silence of a lamb, Guinn has become a Republican in Republican clothing, threatening to chew up The Gang of 63 with the ferocity of a wolf.

Both lawmakers and the public may have trouble accepting that the man who in 2003 proposed taking a billion dollars out of the economy now wants to give people $300 million and is even willing to dust off his little-used veto pen to ensure it. But Guinn, at least politically and perhaps otherwise, is right -- and I think lawmakers detest that most of all.

The detritus of Sessions '03 remains redolent in the Legislative Building. The ugliness is still talked about, the frustration with the governor still there among his allies and enemies alike. Lawmakers privately lament that Guinn took a powder in '03 and only is reappearing now, a few weeks from the end of his last session, to ensure he is remembered for the giveback and not the takeaway.

I feel their pain. But while I believe Guinn should have done more to sell his tax package instead of settling for the monstrosity that passed, while I believe that he should have proposed the property tax solution this time rather than saying almost nothing, and while I think he should have shown more vision and less scattershot with the new spending, he has tapped into public sentiment on the rebate.

It's simple, actually. Most of the public won't be affected that much by the check they receive from the DMV -- many will have forgotten about it a week later. But this is more about symbolism, the governor understands, and saying to the public that we took in more than we thought we would, so we will return some. And he knows the more he talks about it, the more he will activate not just conservatives, but those who say the gesture would be appreciated, even if it is little more than a gesture.

The Gang of 63, generally, just doesn't get it. The more they have, the more they want.

The Nevada Taxpayers Association discovered about $2.7 billion in budget requests in legislative bills outside what the governor has requested -- that total includes $1.3 billion just to get per pupil spending to the national average.

To be fair, at least the Democrats are being true to themselves. They have decided to stand for some poll-tested themes -- minimum wage, lottery, all-day kindergarten. And they insist more needs to be spent in certain areas and that the $300 million would be better served there. Politically risky, perhaps, but philosophically true.

Republicans -- or many of them, at least -- are either mute on the rebate or privately grumble that their pork projects will be lost. And where are the cries to repeal the tax increase of '03 that some argued would devastate the economy and drive businesses out of the state? With so much new money, why wouldn't that be the pure position for conservatives?

I'll tell you why they don't say it: Because they know what they knew last session as they stood less on principle than on politics. They know that the fastest-growing state in the country is falling behind in education, health care and mental health funding and they want to keep up. The 2003 argument had little to do with whether the money was needed or how it was being raised, but over mail pieces to come.

What Guinn, to his credit, has done during the last two sessions is bulk up the foundation of the state's spending plan so that strides (well, maybe incremental steps) have been made in closing the social safety net and keeping pace (at most) in education. He hasn't always done the best job of making the case or of displaying stick-to-itiveness. But without him there, none of that would have happened.

Yes, part of what he is doing now is trying to win back former friends and influence people to remember the kindly, avuncular Kenny, not the tax-and-spend Kenny. So be it.

The only argument that should remain is over what is best to build into that foundation with the avalanche of new money. Is it all-day kindergarten, for the piddling price of $72 million? Is it larger raises for teachers, more mental health services, less pork?

The Gang of 63 already has lost the rebate debate. What are they going to do -- override the governor's veto of a budget without the giveback? That would be reminiscent of the 1989 session, when the brilliant gang overrode Gov. Bob Miller's veto of their pension increase. That played well, as many of those ex-lawmakers will tell you.

Maybe there is a better way to rebate the money, maybe there is a better amount to return. But the gang better give them money or the people will give them death.

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