Jon Ralston on how legislators trivialize the issue that means so much to Nevadans

Sunday, March 18, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.

Thanks to the usually erudite and far-reaching level of discourse in Carson City, we no doubt soon will be empowered for a full day.

In case you have missed it, the sophisticated debate in the capital over lower education has come down to whether empowerment schools or all-day kindergarten will salve what ails the public school system. This meaningless juxtaposition and the hopelessly partisan taking of sides once again threatens to trivialize the issue most Nevadans put at the top of the list.

For perspective, consider: Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposal for empowerment schools is estimated to cost $60 million over the biennium; all-day kindergarten for all schools could cost closer to $100 million. But the entire lower education component of the state's general fund is about $2.3 billion. They are arguing about and elevating the importance of programs that don't even get to 5 percent of the total money the state spends on education.

Welcome to government, Carson City-style, where like the Old West, lines and guns are drawn, and shots are fired without any regard to what the real target should be.

In a recent statewide poll taken by Voter Survey Service of 500 voters (margin of error, 4 percent), 24 percent of respondents chose education as the "single most important problem facing Nevada today." That was more than twice the percentage of any other answer. When asked to name two issues that "should be the top priorities for the governor and the state Legislature in Carson City to concentrate on," only education got to 50 percent, far outdistancing crime concerns (36 percent).

It's clear the public wants Gibbons and the Gang of 63 to do something to shore up the public education system. But stasis reigns in the capital.

The governor is paralyzed by his "no new taxes" pledge, which is bereft of nuance and absent from reality. Democratic legislators won't talk about doing something to substantially increase education funding - I hear them whining about the governor reducing education's percentage of the budget but they won't risk their numbers by actually proposing what they believe.

So politics trumps substance in the macro and micro nondebate occurring in Carson City.

First the micro: It's obvious to most parents and most experts, including the governor's empowerment schools guru Michael Strembitsky, that all-day kindergarten works. Even if Gibbons and his GOP legislative lemmings are so skeptical - although they have not nearly enough information to be so - then they should simply give parents a choice to opt out of all-day kindergarten. Let's see how many do.

And why are these GOP lawmakers - the Assembly GOP caucus last week announced its opposition to all-day kindergarten before a single hearing had been held - so reflexively opposing the concept? If you think their reasons are substantive, you need an all-day course in Politics 101.

The Democrats are better, but not by much. Their equally reflexive support for all-day kindergarten generally has less to do with any ample supply of common sense than their fealty to Speaker Barbara Buckley and, alas, the teachers union. By being a reliable echo of the Nevada State Education Association, the Democrats provide the other side with ammunition.

Moreover, the Democratic legislative contingent's decision last week to propose its own empowerment bill, without the $60 million pri ce tag, is a transparent political ploy designed to undermine the governor. It's a smart political ploy, but a ploy nonetheless.

The Democrats also would have to acknowledge that they never would have considered empowerment schools in their arsenal had not Gibbons bought into it after being lobbied by some advocates of the concept. They are at the table on this for that reason alone, no matter what they argue.

The likely compromise seems to be a slice of empowerment and a piece of all-day kindergarten will make it through the session's usual eleventh-hour bargaining session. Right now, it's almost impossible to find a Republican who supports all-day kindergarten and a Democrat who supports the governor's empowerment plan.

But if a compromise can be crafted that encompasses both ideas, the governor and the Gang of 63 can call a news conference in June and declare how they have acted in a bipartisan way on behalf of the people of the great state of Nevada.

Now about the other 95 percent of the lower education budget