Friday, March 30, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.
Every Legislature needs a moniker. One was dubbed The Session From Hell. Another was labeled The Session of Nothing.
Now we know what to call the 2007 Legislature: The Session of Cut and Study.
Gov. Jim Gibbons, setting the tone as the state's leader, has refused to properly address any of Nevada's pressing problems, opting instead for an implementation of that always thoughtful plan for the nation's fastest-growing state, with its collapsing education, health care and physical infrastructures: No new taxes.
And if you read his lips earlier this week, the task-force-loving governor went one better: He wants to cut $112 million out of the budget while studying the roads infrastructure problem that already has been studied by a panel of experts, studying whether all-day kindergarten works and embarking on an empowerment schools experiment that will cost $60 million.
Does any of this make sense to anyone? The Session of Cut and Study?
The Gibbons Doctrine, which demands fealty to the simplistic and the avoidance of the complex, has as its latest iteration a reflexively ridiculous response to a $112 million shortfall.
Sayeth the governor: "We must live within our means to ensure a balanced budget. Therefore, I am asking Nevada's state agencies to reexamine their budgets for possible reductions to ensure that we are exercising responsible management of taxpayer dollars ... We must make sacrifices in order to comply with our constitutional requirements of a balanced state budget. After a careful evaluation of projected revenues, I am confident that we will provide a budget that meets our needs and funds the programs necessary to the success of our state."
The Session of Cut and Study?
Never fear, though. The governor is holding sacrosanct the budgets for lower education, child welfare and transportation construction.
Yes, let's keep them at their pathetic levels and just ensure that unimportant budgets such as homeland security or mental health or state welfare are slashed so the governor doesn't have to - what was his phrase? - make any political sacrifice.
The roads budget may be the most laughable exception and shows Gibbons' chutzpah. Here is a governor who ignored the recommendations of an impressive panel of experts - they suggested modest tax increases to help create a steady revenue stream - and wants to start studying the problem all over again so he can keep his tax pledge. So after barely making a dent in an infrastructure deficit that must now be well over $4 billion, he is showing he considers the issue of great importance by not cutting that paltry part of his budget.
Nothing from nothing, to quote that great philosopher Billy Preston, still leaves nothing.
As for child welfare, the governor only inserted an extra pittance into his budget after being confronted by government officials who showed him how abysmal the training of workers has been in Nevada. And on lower ed, Gibbons has done nothing to address the per-pupil funding levels and instead has dismissed all-day kindergarten, saying he needs more information, and grabbed onto an empowerment schools program, which he also wants to study for two years and yet has an arbitrary $60 million price tag.
The Session of Cut and Study?
The responses from lawmakers to the governor's announcement have been characteristically mealy-mouthed. Heaven forfend any of them should say what many of them know to be the truth about how yet another status-quo-and-less budget vis-a-vis the state's growth will only be a step backward and toward even more serious quality of life problems.
You cannot cut and study your way to prosperity. But too many lawmakers probably believe you can cut and study your way to reelection.
So who among the brave Gang of 63 will stand up and tell the governor he is wrong? Who will stand up and say the time for cut and study is gone? Who will stand up and say we can no longer apply Band-Aids and we need to treat the revenue sickness that is causing horrific Southern Nevada commutes, producing students unprepared for college and pushing mentally ill and methamphetamine-addicted people onto the streets and into prisons?
Who will be the Oliver Twist who goes to our own Mr. Bumble in the statehouse and asks the question on behalf of all the state's needs, who puts an end to the Session of Cut and Study, who has the courage to risk a lashing by simply asking:
Please, governor, may I have some more?
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