WEEK IN REVIEW: CARSON CITY

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Sunday, May 13, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Gov. Jim Gibbons scored big last week, in the opinion of many here, with a proposal to build roads to ease the state's increasingly congested traffic, without raising taxes.

Gibbons would divert money derived from the hotel room tax that currently goes to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and send it to road-builders. Also, he would divert money from the statewide vehicle sales and live entertainment tax and use it for roads.

The total is nearly $800 million. By using bonds, this will give the state about $2.5 billion between now and 2015.

Gibbons was happy to point out that unlike his Democratic opponents in the Assembly, he was building roads without a tax increase. The Democrats have proposed a weight-distance tax on trucks.

Less traffic and no new taxes: Who wouldn't support that?

More on that in a minute.

For some insight on the entire transportation conversation, which is consuming everyone, it might be wise to turn to Irving Janis, the late Yale psychologist who was a leading theorist of "groupthink." This is a shorthand term referring to conventional wisdom that becomes hardened among a group of people, who are then immune to outside analysis.

Think of the Soviet Politburo or nearly all of Washington, D.C., before the Iraq war.

With such a small group of legislators, administration officials and lobbyists working on policy, and many of them so far from home, it's easy to imagine how groupthink could settle in.

Maybe that's how transportation became the dominant issue of the session.

What do we want? Roads! When do we want them? Now!

In fact, a recent Review-Journal poll had 25 percent of respondents saying the Legislature's top priority should be K-12 education and teacher pay, while 9 percent cited traffic congestion. Far and away, education was tops.

The whole roads imbroglio has education advocates feeling befuddled when they're not enraged.

Here's Terry Hickman, executive director of the Nevada State Education Association: "It's unbelievable to teachers and support professionals that this is the issue of this Legislature. How can we afford to do this and do nothing for public education? This priority came out of nowhere."

What must be an uncomfortable fact for Hickman is that all the oxygen being consumed by roads shows how little clout education advocates have in Carson City. In recognition of that, the teachers have indicated they may go straight to the voters for more money for education.

And in the end Hickman and his allies may have the upper hand.

Gibbons said in his State of the State address that putting off all-day kindergarten for all children was the "fiscally responsible" thing to do. But then he found a bundle of money - incidentally, just shy of the amount a consultant said Nevada schools need to achieve adequacy - for a project that's important to less than 10 percent of the public.

With this move, Gibbons has announced his chief priority: Asphalt. (Also, the entertainment tax and vehicles sales tax diversions are coming out of the general fund, which will create holes in future budgets. No word on how he'll fill them.)

Moreover, by lining up against the LVCVA, the governor has made a lot of enemies among former supporters in the tourism industry, who want the convention center upgraded and more of the "What happens here" ad campaign to fill the tens of thousands of new hotel rooms coming on line.

In the end, Gibbons' splashy roads proposal was spoiled by a report from NBC News about his relationship with Warren Trepp, a defense contractor alleged to have bribed the governor with cash and gifts. The FBI is investigating, and NBC had embarrassing photos of Gibbons on a cruise with Trepp.

All together now: The Gibbons transportation plan is dead!

Yes, Dr. Janis might have something to say about this.