Editorial: Gibbons vs. Gibbons

Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

One of the more intriguing things to watch as Gov. Jim Gibbons prepares to cut the state budget is the juxtaposition of Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, on their views of funding government.

Both are conservative Republicans. The governor has been bitterly anti-tax and condemned the 2003 Legislature for passing the largest tax increase in state history. The first lady, however, voted for it as a member of the Assembly.

In the current budget situation, the governor has been making dire warnings about the budget projections and calling for cuts. His wife, meanwhile, is part of a task force asking for more money in the next state budget to further her crusade against methamphetamine.

There is a philosophical gulf between the two that seems to sum up the current debate over the budget quite well. The first lady apparently sees the need for services in Nevada, yet the governor is a member of the anti-government faction that has kept the state in fiscal bondage, unable to provide adequate schools, highways or social services.

Is fighting methamphetamine important? Certainly. So are education and mental health care and other social services and reducing gridlock. Yet there isn't enough money in the budget to provide adequate levels of service in any of those areas and cutting will do further harm.

Gibbons will cut the budget knowing, as he told the Associated Press, it will "affect people, families, children, education, security."

Still he refused to discuss raising revenue to meet the state's clear need, adding: "I have maintained that government can maintain itself and actually operate on its current existing revenues, and will continue with that until I'm shown that it's impossible to do."

That impossibility was clear to Dawn Gibbons and the overwhelming majority of state lawmakers in 2003. Lawmakers saw they couldn't provide for a state growing at an exponential rate by cutting the budget.

The same holds true four years later. The only difference is, the Gibbons who understands that isn't in office.