Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Jon Ralston: Egomania rules in Carson City

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 28 - 30, 2005

CARSON CITY -- After a week spent as a Legislative Building stalker, I have good news to report: They are not going to raise your taxes, they are going to give you some money and they will not, for the first time since 1999, violate the constitutional mandate to finish in 120 days.

But here's the bad news: It's still not about you; it's still all about them.

The Gang of 63, like acne or a cold, never changes much. Some years there are more pimples than others. Some sessions have more congestion than others. But they are always irritating and too often embarrassing, always looking for salves or placebos instead of a cure. And by the end, they are red-faced -- those that remain capable of embarrassment, that is.

Alas, Session '05 will be no different as personal and political agendas take center stage and affect what survives the final days much more than any policy consideration. The most egregious example of such bad behavior came two years ago, when the animus quotient grew larger than ever and the tax package produced by the legislative Cuisinart was the worst kind of lawmaking mush -- made without a recipe, thrown together at the 11th hour and completely unpalatable.

Most Southern Nevadans -- actually, most Nevadans -- have only superficial or stereotypical views of what happens during a legislative session. But whatever you think happens there, it's much, much worse.

The unfathomable becomes fathomable on a daily basis. Lower education is pitted against higher education in a bid for funding. Big Gaming tries to get something on that the casinos inevitably portray as good for the public. And the sight of 63 bacon-craving lawmakers trying to grab as much pork as they can, regardless of the cost or the utility or the worthy projects deprived, makes one feel like a gawker on the streets of Pamplona as the bulls come careening along, determined to finish but oblivious to the carnage they are causing along the way.

And there is always a political component to any session, especially near the end, as individuals and parties posture for the coming campaign. But nothing has ever compared to the gubernatorial race overlay dominating this session, as Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins and Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus have sniped, sneered and carped at each other all session long as lobbyists have been terrified to be caught in the company of one by the other.

I write this early Friday as lawmakers try to meet one of those faux deadlines they erected after voters, in their finite wisdom, agreed to the arbitrary stricture. By the time you read this, the deadline for bills to get out of the second house (not the house of origination) will have passed (unless they vote to change it), except that is for bills given special dispensation by legislative leaders.

The emblematic debate as this session winds down is over all-day kindergarten, which many Republicans seem to oppose less for philosophical reasons than because gubernatorial hopeful Perkins has been pushing for it. But the Assembly Democrats' pushing for this package, long overdue here and perhaps the single most important education program they could implement, has caused Senate Republicans to hold up the university budget.

In the session with $2 billion in new money, they are arguing over $72 million for a program that could improve the public school system and drive more families away from private schools. And they are arguing over whether northern or southern university campuses deserve more pork.

Lawmakers could fund all-day kindergarten, give teachers a modest raise and slurp enough pork to keep them sated for a couple of years. That would be too easy, though, too responsible, too thoughtful. There may be an embarrassment of riches in the capital. But there is still an embarrassing number of the Gang of 63 who either want to go along to come back or remain happily and blissfully clueless.

And that is what the most skillful lobbyists continue to rely on. Take the neighborhood gaming bill, which has metamorphosed from The Station Casinos Chutzpah measure (we have ours, no one else can have anything) to the neighborhood casino oligopoly bill (we want ours and no one else can have any).

This issue may be the greatest legislative sham perpetrated on the Southern Nevada public since it first began in 1997 with a bill that was sold as the end of neighborhood casinos for all time. Since then, thanks to loopholes carved out by lobbyists, many have been erected, meaning any attempt to slow them down now is inherently anti-competitive. But it will benefit the public because there will potentially be fewer projects and more certainty about where they will be, so the argument goes.

So the likely result is that a handful of companies with juice in the capital will be able to build and anyone who doesn't have that stroke will not get the entitlement -- if that's not a microcosm of the legislative process, I don't know what is.

So, too, is the Great Rebate Debate, which has come down to how much and how to do it. It's mostly about pride of authorship at this point, with lawmakers who once declared Gov. Kenny Guinn's idea DOA now acting as if they embraced it from the beginning.

Once again that has little to do with you -- my guess is that most of you would rather see the money plowed back into education, perhaps starting with all-day kindergarten. But for lawmakers -- at least most of them -- it's all about them and doing what they think is politically most advantageous, so they can return to do this all over again, give or take, in 2007.

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