Jon Ralston tries to figure out why he always gets his hopes up, only to be disappointed time and again by the Legislature

Sunday, May 6, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

After 20 years of trekking to Carson City, I feel as if I am suffering from Battered Pundit's Syndrome. I arrive with hope in my heart that things will get better, that statesmanship will supersede showmanship. And I leave, 120 days or so later, bruised by a hurly-burly where much is promised but little delivered.

Every session is, ultimately, the same - a combination of "Groundhog Day" and something out of Kafka's imagination. But some are more similar than others - and Session '07 is looking and sounding like the most violent one of all, Session '03, which had one regular and two specials before the largest tax increase in Nevada history was enacted. Many still have nasty scars and frightening flashbacks from that experience.

I don't necessarily mean that a massive tax increase is coming. I mean the same kind of partisanship, rancor and cravenness is on the horizon that led to the painful result Session '03 produced. Then it was keeping up with growth in education and social services; now it's roads.

So why are we back here where we always seem to be? This is not so simple as an epidemic of myopia among the three score and three and the governor.

Nor is it about a contagion of fear that they will not be allowed by voters to return to the capital's hallowed halls should they be farsighted or, at the very least, honest with the public about what their short-sighted policies have wrought.

Nor is it only about the serial substitution of the simple for the complex, the dumbing-down of the state's problems so smart policies are buried or never discussed to fill widening holes in the state's porous infrastructure, which is producing too many uneducated kids, too many inadequate roads, too many inmates in prison, too many abused and neglected children and too many untreated mentally ill patients. And so on.

The system, much like the state's infrastructure, is broken. And it must be repaired before it's too late, which may be next session when a statutory spending cap will make the cuts even more damaging.

The reasons for this very vicious cycle are contained in the answers to two questions:

For example, GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio supported the tax increase four years ago, and he said on "Face to Face" last week that he believes it is an "absolute necessity to provide some kind of funding (for roads)." He added that he "wouldn't hesitate" to override a gubernatorial veto of such a package "if I thought it was the right thing to do."

That kind of candor and leadership is as refreshing as it is rare.

Chancellor Jim Rogers was ridiculed for saying an income tax should be considered, but his underlying premise is right: Sooner or later, the free ride is over. Or it should be, including for businesses that have thrived thanks to a gaming-driven economy and whose contributions to the budget are paltry.

There are other factors, too. Democrats too in thrall to leftist special interests whose "more, more, more" mantra is as nuanced as "no new taxes." Republicans who forever bleat about cutting spending and waste and then can't provide a list longer than a half-page.

The Beltway's version of acrimonious partisanship also is being mimicked in Carson City, where working together is viewed as weakness by too many. And in the compressed crucible of 120 days, where deadlines are evanescent and deliberation is almost nonexistent, is anyone surprised there is more heat than light?

Now you see why I feel like a battered pundit. But forget how I feel. The real battering, session after session, is perpetrated on the public, which also reinvigorates the cycle by continuing to sleepwalk through legislative elections and then enabling what happens, or does not happen, in far away Carson City.