Jon Ralston outlines the ways in which a lawsuit filed can rectify the irresponsible governing of years past

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

As a governor who is northern/rural-centric plans to balance the budget on the backs of Clark County residents, and as the power to tax is about to be sundered from those we elect to make those decisions, Southern Nevadans should pay close attention to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

Its resolution could change the course of Nevada spending and taxing history, transferring power to the populists and away from not just the politicians but also the special interests that sway them. Although that might seem like a salutary outcome, it could push Nevada further down the slippery slope toward direct democracy, and yet serve up just desserts for an elected and anointing class that has grown arrogant and satisfied with success.

Oh, and one more possibility: The lawsuit’s outcome also could change the balance of power in this state, now firmly in the hands of Northern Nevadans thanks to Gov. Jim Gibbons, R-northern/rural Nevada, and state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, and allow the people of Clark County essentially to take over state government.

Southern supremacy is hardly the goal of the lawsuit. Yet it is ironic that this is occurring as term limits — and perhaps a forced limitation on the governor’s tenure — loom in 2010, when northern and rural legislators who have long held sway over a brittle Clark County delegation will depart and when, to paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd on Neil Young, Southern men may not want Gibbons around anymore.

A half-dozen plaintiffs who believe the Legislature has put inequitable constraints on the ability of initiative-seekers to qualify their petitions filed the lawsuit. They include the American Civil Liberties Union, would-be gaming taxer Kermitt Waters and those who want marijuana legalized here.

The suit says the law discriminates “against voters in densely populated counties” — that’s us, folks, and, to a lesser degree, Washoe County. It argues that after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Nevada’s requirement that petitions qualify with 10 percent of the vote in 75 percent of Nevada’s counties (13 out of 17), the 2007 Legislature came up with an even more cockamamie formula — that an initiative “must be proposed by a number of registered voters from each county in the state that is at least equal to 10 percent of the voters who voted in the entire state at the last preceding general election multiplied by the population percentage for that county.”

Really. That’s what it says. And it was approved by 58 of the 63 lawmakers.

The lawsuit points out the patent silliness of the provision. For instance, you would need 19,525 signatures in Clark County but only 14 in Esmeralda and 23 in Eureka. Does that make any sense to anyone without a legislative title?

An even better question: How did anyone from Southern Nevada vote for a provision designed to give disproportionate influence to rural counties? I love Fallon and Ely and Elko as much as the next Nevadan, but why do lawmakers, two-thirds of whom are from down here, continue to castrate Clark County?

The ACLU folks have suggested that forcing each congressional district to provide 10 percent of the signatures would be constitutional because they are close in population. That formula also would give rural residents a voice. But not a disproportionate one.

I am tempted to say that to seek redress for all the injustices and indignities foisted on the south by rural and northern lawmakers — has anyone noticed all those paved rural roads while we sit in traffic jams? — that no regional strictures should exist.

If all the signatures could be assembled in Clark County, so be it. Do the other areas of the state actually think Southern Nevadans are so irresponsible that we would support initiatives that would be inimical to our county neighbors?

Oh heaven forfend, my rural and northern friends. We would not seek redress for the unfairness of certain funding formulas over the years, nor would we ever bypass our less-than-cohesive legislative delegation, which often puts partisanship over regional priorities.

No, we are just as reliable and ONE Nevada-oriented as the governor and would never propose initiatives designed to fund our schools, our roads, our infrastructure. Nor would Clark County residents try to qualify initiatives to raise taxes on gaming or business to pay for such endeavors.

So none of the haughty forces, special interests and legislators who have tried to eviscerate the initiative process through the Legislature should fret about the lawsuit, which should be successful. We will behave just as responsibly as you have.

Trust us.