Editorial: A vision for no progress

Thursday, June 22, 2006 | 7:11 a.m.

State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, failed last year when he tried to interest the Legislature in a constitutional amendment that would limit state and local-government spending increases to the percentages of growth in population and inflation.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, was a strong opponent of Beers' plan to govern spending by a constitutionally mandated formula rather than by the votes of elected representatives.

Raggio said such formulas, which take away the power of legislators to match tax revenue with actual need, sound good to voters - until they come to the Legislature with requests for new or expanded programs.

After Beers' resolution died in the Senate Finance Committee, he told the Las Vegas Sun, "It will play better with the voters." Following through on that prediction, Beers authored the Tax and Spending Control initiative, organized a petition drive, and on Tuesday turned in more than 150,000 signatures to election officials.

County election workers have two weeks to count and verify the signatures, 83,184 of which must be valid for the initiative to appear on November's ballot. A union-backed group is protesting the initiative on the grounds that some of the petition forms circulated to voters varied from the wording of the master petition filed with the Nevada secretary of state's office.

If the petition makes it onto the ballot, we hope voters understand that it is simply a grandstanding ploy by gubernatorial hopeful Beers, and not a sound way to manage the state's finances. Formulas cannot respond to emerging needs or emergencies, but our elected representatives in Carson City can, if necessary. Beers would be hard pressed to explain why, other than for political reasons, the initiative is needed. The Nevada Legislature has raised taxes just once over the past 15 years - a record that hardly indicates the need for handcuffing a runaway, spendthrift government.

Under Beers' petition, which voters would have to approve twice, any hope that fast-growing Nevada has of improving its already underfunded services, including schools, roads, health care, child welfare and public safety, would be dashed.