Quit the bluster, let’s look at our needs, Raggio urges

David McGrath Schwartz

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007 | 1:44 a.m.

RENO - You can tell something about a person by what he displays on his walls.

Hanging in Bill Raggio's 12th floor office are signed portraits of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole. You get the idea.

So you can imagine his upset, then, when after the 2003 session he was derisively called a "RINO" - the pejorative acronym for Republican in Name Only.

This, to the state senate's majority leader and the No. 2 Republican in state government.

The reason for the name-calling: He supported Gov. Kenny Guinn's $836 million tax hike during the 2003 session.

Raggio has been a bedrock of Nevada's Legislature - and Republican Party - for 3 1/2 decades.

So he wants to be clear about one thing: He doesn't want to raise your taxes.

He just wants to know how much taxes it would take to pay for sufficient government services.

"It's time to take a long, hard look at our tax structure and our tax policy," he said the day after celebrating his 81st birthday last week.

That part is significant to the story. He says his advanced years have made him more willing to speak his mind, and made him a more pragmatic politician.

"I wouldn't have gotten into politics if it was like this when I got in," he said.

Vocalizing his position puts him in a difficult political spot.

On one side, advocates for education, transportation and social services are pleading for more money to meet Nevada's basic needs, even as they're being told to cut their budgets.

On the other, Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons says he won't raise taxes, a position embraced by a vocal anti-tax wing in the Legislature. They're sticking to their guns even as state revenue falls short of projections, prompting the governor to call for departments to prepare for cuts.

So Raggio walks a thin line.

He praises Gibbons for taking a tough budget stand in the face of disappointing revenue and says no special session is needed. But he also opposes cuts to higher education and child welfare, which are among Gibbons' potential targets.

And now he's admonishing his political colleagues to stop making broad pledges not to raise taxes.

"It's time to quit the bluster," he said.

He's not taking a shot at just the governor, he says. "I was finding fault with everyone."

Partisanship has grown and civility has eroded during his terms as senator. The more hard-core limited-government viewpoint has been increasingly prominent, he said.

"I'm a conservative in the sense I fully support the free - enterprise system. I want to see government as limited as possible," he said. "I also believe that we should be fiscally responsible, but not such a fiscal conservative that we don't meet what I think are real needs."

He said there are still hard feelings in the Republican Party over the last tax fight, in 2003, when the group of anti-tax legislators known alternately as the "Mean 15" or "Fearless 15" pushed back against Guinn.

"I still have people calling me a RINO because I backed the governor," Raggio said.

Come the 2009 Legislature, he said, he would support a study that looks at spending by the state and whether needs are being addressed.

Some politicians will fight him, he says. But he hopes if the study is unbiased, it might influence changes in the state's fiscal policies.

"There are people out there who think our tax base is perfect the way it is and we should cut spending," he said. "That's easy to say unless you sit on a money committee in the Legislature every two years and listen to the needs."