Sunday, June 10, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.
The World According to Jim Gibbons is a contradictory place.
The governor can propose record spending and no cuts. But he can, basking in the post-legislative glow of Gibbonsworld, boast that his signature accomplishment is that he made "government live within its means."
The governor can propose that an initiative to force lawmakers to consider education first will forever prevent the schools bill from being held hostage and, thus, implicitly improve K-12. Then, when the education budget is held hostage and creates a logjam at session's end, he can puff up in Gibbonsworld and brag that critics who said Education First wouldn't work are "completely disproven."
And the governor can, through his no-new-taxes pledge, constrict how much can be spent on transportation , thus ensuring that at least four-fifths of the need has no revenue source and that long-range planning is impossible. Then, regretful in Gibbonsworld, he can lament that "maybe we ought to be looking out there a little farther down the road and saying let's build for 20 years out there instead of for the next five years."
Ah, Gibbonsworld is bliss.
The governor brought his revisionist history act to Las Vegas ONE last week and made the aforementioned comments in an interview with Jeff Gillan. All governors embark on an "I Won" tour after sessions conclude, buttressed by lawmakers who legislate around the edges of his budget and almost always approve most of what he wants. But Gibbons, in last week's victory swing that stopped on Channel Eight Drive, has brought this post-session gubernatorial virtual reality to a new level of spin and/or denial.
It's one endeavor to put the best face on things - as then-Gov. Kenny Guinn did after the 2003 session when he asserted that he had obtained most of what he requested in that record tax increase, even after he endured an unprecedented pummeling and deconstruction of what he had proposed. But it's quite another to put a false face on things - as Gibbons did by creating his own world and asking everyone to live there.
Before I show you that Gibbons- world is a Pleasantville kind of place - black and white and without nuance or color - let's give the governor his due. As he told Gillan, "We got everything we asked for." And even in the real world, that is true.
Gibbons did not raise taxes, even though he was never asked to despite his us vs. them construct that helped define the final month. And if the major issues of the session were transportation and education, Gibbons helped define the parameters of the former and ensured his pet schools idea - empowerment - also received some funding.
But let's just look at the claims in that Gillan interview.
Gibbons' description of how he changed the way government behaves is laughable. "We are oftentimes asked to raise taxes," he told Gillan. "But we never go back and ask government to tighten its belt ... that's what I wanted to do."
Where, pray tell, was the belt-tightening in a budget that grew by double digits, even on a Gibbonsworld calculator? Would you call it belt-tightening if you increased your budget that much?
Gibbons did not cut the budget. He did not even propose any serious slicing of state programs that conservatives have asserted for decades are wasteful.
To be fair, the budget growth is mandated by increases in student, prison and social service populations. But for Gibbons to make it seem as if he made government hold the line is just disingenuous.
Education First, which he and his wife opportunistically proposed to help their careers after that Guinn tax increase, did nothing. Yes, the education budget had to be funded first, but arguments over small amounts of K-12 money between the houses held up progress for weeks. Lawmakers worked on the other budgets in the background while that was occurring. And even in Gibbonsworld, it would be hard to argue any nexus between Education First and educational improvements.
Finally, on transportation, the governor's gall in ruing the short-sightedness of not planning 20 years ahead - exactly what a task force and many lawmakers he disregarded said should be done - is the height of chutzpah. Yes, the projects can't all be built at once. But the longer we wait to find steady money streams, instead of the illogical room tax-local tax-rental car tax package to pay for the first fifth, the worse the problem will get.
That's the real world. Gibbonsworld? That's just one man's fantasy.
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