Editorial: The governor as roadblock

Sunday, June 3, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

The state has known since at least 2005 that it was going to come up billions short in urgently needed road-building funds over the next decade unless new sources of revenue were found.

That was the year that then-Gov. Kenny Guinn appointed a task force to study the shortfall - now estimated at $5 billion - and recommend ways to overcome it. The task force turned in its recommendations last summer.

After that, it became the job of the new governor, Jim Gibbons, to propose a way of overcoming the shortfall and to reach agreement with the Legislature on a plan that would provide long-term, reliable sources of new revenue.

In our view, this should have been Gibbons' top priority as Nevada's new governor. Given the growth projections for Nevada, a well-constructed plan this legislative session was the best chance state residents and visitors had for avoiding major congestion in the immediate years ahead.

Instead of taking a leadership position by offering a bill early in the session, however, Gibbons shrank from his responsibility. He waited until Tuesday - less than a week before the session's scheduled close - to get a bill to the Senate. And it arrived not as a wellspring of knowledge, but as a spineless mass of confusion and contention.

Rather than propose broad-based tax and fee increases, as Guinn's task force had recommended, Gibbons chose to honor his only campaign vow, to oppose tax and fee increases at all cost. So he presented a reckless bill diverting untold millions from room taxes now going to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. At this late date in the session, his plan had the LVCVA staff and many in the gaming industry furious.

With Gibbons' bill arriving so late, legislative leaders were forced to use the few hours left to it to cobble together a compromise bill. Their efforts resulted in a bill to divert $20 million a year from the LVCVA and annually divert another $45 million to the highway fund from existing property and rental-car taxes.

Under this bill, the new revenue would be used to make payments on a bond issue that would yield another $1 billion for road construction. So what about the additional $4 billion that is urgently required to meet the true funding need? That was left to future legislative sessions.

The responsibility for missing the best opportunity to ensure quality roads in the near future rests with the Gridlock Governor.