SUN EDITORIAL:

Protecting Nevada’s future

Gibbons needs to concentrate on a broader revenue base, not a stronger spending cap

Sunday, July 6, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons proudly marches to the single beat of no new taxes, leaving the state to meander without a vision for the future. A fiscally competent governor would take a good, long look at our broken tax structure to determine who is paying his fair share of taxes and who is not. A fiscally competent governor would come to realize that a broader and more stable revenue base could help Nevada better cope with economic slumps. A fiscally competent governor would find ways to improve the quality and performance of education and other state-funded programs to make Nevada a better place to live than it is today.

Gibbons is none of the above. A gaffe master, he possesses a quick trigger as a text messenger but a slow draw on the streets of fiscal reason. True to form, he announced in a press release Monday that he plans to propose a stronger cap on state spending to avoid future budget shortfalls. He now says the budget he signed in 2007 was too large. He does a lot of things that he regrets later. Simply placing a stronger cap on spending will be one of his regrets.

He will find himself waking up in the middle of the night, haunted by the voice of reason. It will sound something like the reaction from Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, to the latest round of state budget cuts when she told the Associated Press: “They’re all terrible choices. I believe we should never have to make these kinds of choices ever again.”

If we are lucky, Gibbons will come to understand that cutting more bone from razor-thin budgets could have been avoided with a broader revenue base. That should be his top priority for the 2009 session of the Nevada Legislature, not a tighter spending cap that will simply hurt more schoolchildren, senior citizens and others whose lives can be improved by adequately funded state programs.