Jon Ralston on how news releases show no one wants budget responsibility

Friday, April 6, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

With the Legislature passing its midpoint this week, The Session of Cut and Study is in full flower.

Whether you come from the right or left, the buck-passing on the state's needs should be disturbing. And on Thursday, we saw perfect illustrations - in a couple of news releases - of the disingenuous handling of the looming budget crisis by the executive and legislative branches.

The truth that has been ignored during sessions of record taxing (2003) and record spending (2005) is this: Lawmakers have been unwilling or unable to find steady revenue to reverse the biennial trend of applying fiscal Band-Aids, hoping that will keep them well through their reelections. But on their return to Carson City, they discover the financial sickness recurs.

No single news release I have seen in recent memory so neatly encapsulates this depressing cycle as does the one Assembly Ways and Means Chairman Morse Arberry sent out Thursday. The release states that legislative fiscal analysts - and these guys are total pros - have discovered "the governor's proposed budget for education only allocates $13 million over the biennium in new enhancements for K-12 education."

This is nothing short of astonishing. To put this in perspective, that means out of a $2.3 billion lower education budget, the governor only invested $13 million in new programs.

Yes, part of this is gratuitous political posturing. But Arberry also is right to be upset.

When then-Gov. Kenny Guinn proposed that $1 billion tax increase in 2003, about three-quarters of that money was needed just to fund burgeoning student enrollments and social service recipients. But it was easier to tar Guinn as a profligate spender, and many opportunists did just that.

Guinn was dealing with a radically different financial situation, too. The state was not awash in money as it was in 2005 and, to a much lesser degree, now. Guinn had two choices: Raise taxes to meet current needs or eviscerate key parts of the state budget.

Guinn left behind a ticking time bomb for Jim Gibbons, who naively adopted the bare-bones budget his predecessor left behind and is now faced with exploding needs and no way to defuse them if he adheres to his read-my-lips pledge. Now that sales taxes have taken a downturn and because previous Legislatures failed to construct a third leg to the stool supported only by sales and gaming taxes, Gibbons has asked agencies to produce $112 million in cuts.

That abdicating of responsibility, which included holding harmless lower education, child welfare and transportation, has produced predictable results. University system Chancellor Jim Rogers and Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Maupin have informed the governor of the destructive ramifications of his proposed cuts.

This is more than just territoriality and empire-preservation. This is a fact of life in the fastest-growing state in the country with pressing infrastructure needs and where saying "no new taxes" means that at some point you have to cut serious services.

Conservatives see the debate as phony because these "cuts" are actually reductions in increases. True enough. But these increases are needed to keep pace with growth - as Guinn tried to explain four years ago.

Republicans in 2003 never produced a detailed list of cuts to existing services to negate the Guinn tax increase - in fact, most were willing to support at least $600 million in taxes. But just as hypocritical this time are the Democrats who want to pummel Gibbons for his priorities.

Arberry and his Democratic colleagues, if they are responsible and really believe their own rhetoric, should produce a list of ways they would fund not just lower education but other budgets not keeping up with growth. Never has it been more apt that they should put their money where their mouths are.

The other news release Thursday was put out by the governor's office and listed the members of a task force to study public-private partnerships to help solve the transportation infrastructure problems. Just as we can't afford to try to cut our way to prosperity, we also can't continue to use blue-ribbon panels to postpone difficult decisions.

This isn't about Jim Gibbons or Morse Arberry or anyone else. It's about solutions instead of rhetoric. It's about action instead of procrastination. It's about leadership instead of campaigning.

And it's about ending The Session of Cut and Study halfway through and using the last 60 days to redefine Legislature '07. The Session of Substance? That has a nice ring to it.