Dems have selfish motives for resisting

By Jon Ralston

Friday, June 13, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

Barring an indictment, an impeachment or a recall — or, least likely, an attack of conscience — Jim Gibbons will be the governor until his term ends in 2010, either voluntarily or forcibly.

Understanding that doleful reality, we need to look beyond his manifest talents at partying on cruises, with cocktail waitresses and with various married women and ask a more serious question: Will state lawmakers and leaders allow this pied piper to lead the state off a fiscal cliff?

At an “emergency” budget meeting Thursday, Gibbons succeeded in changing the subject to a more important one than which woman he will soon be texting on his nonstate device. That question is what to do in a state where projections show that for the first time in decades — and perhaps ever — Nevada will take in less money in the current fiscal year than it did in the previous one.

This is a difficult situation for any state — and most others are experiencing economic constriction. But in the fastest-growing state in the country, where government spending remains paltry in many areas, this is nothing short of devastating — at least in the long run, and maybe sooner than many think.

So why not, as I have been arguing for months and as the governor apparently suggested at that meeting Thursday, call a special session of the Legislature to consider potential short- and long-term solutions?

The governor’s political advisers have been urging Gibbons for weeks to call lawmakers to the capital to consider the budget problems. The politics of this could be quite beneficial to Gibbons, who needs every bit of help he can muster.

The governor could call for a session, with the agenda ostensibly to consider whether to enact any immediate and far-reaching solutions to an unprecedented budget deficit. Gibbons would promise to veto any attempts by lawmakers to plug the burgeoning hole with new taxes and would realize that if they went along with his budget-cutting mania, it would be further validation for him.

A foolproof trap, right? How can he lose under such a scenario, even if the state might?

I grant that Gibbons has the kind of once-in-a-millennium talent to take a no-lose situation and somehow find a way to defeat himself. He is that skillful.

Nevertheless, state lawmakers resisted the suggestion for a special session Thursday, just as they have for months. It’s a bipartisan recoil, but I think the Democrats especially are nervous about returning to the scene of their many crimes against bravery.

They can argue policy reasons not to have one — the fiscal year is about to expire in a few weeks, the amount of money left to be cut in this biennium is about $30 million, whatever needs to be done can wait until Session ’09.

That rings hollow — a regular session is too crowded and compressed to take the time to consider this overarching issue, which is hardly just about an additional $30 million deficit this biennium. It’s about a billion-dollar deficit and the prospect of 14 percent — or even 21 percent — agency cuts in the next cycle. That is unsustainable — and they know it, Democrats and Republicans alike.

But methinks the real reasons the Democrats don’t want a special session have less to do with policy and more to do with politics. With 2008 looking like a Democratic year up and down the ticket, why would party leaders want to engage in an exercise that could only hurt them and potentially help the Republicans? (Answer key provided: Because the good of the many outweighs the political careers of a few.)

The procrastination and myopia that have plagued this state have brought us to where we are. We’ll fix it later. Just wait until next session. This Band-Aid ought to do for now.

No one is suggesting — not even I — that this will be the session for a major tax increase. But to put together a logical, integrated plan — gaming taxes, room taxes, big-business taxes — that doesn’t affect those hurting the most in the lagging economy would be a fine start and a prelude to Session ’09.

If the governor actually calls a special session and offers a broad agenda to fix the current budget and do long-term repairs on the system, legislators should rise to the occasion and embrace the challenge. They should thank Gibbons for the invitation and prepare to do battle.

And the governor, whose only relevance to the exercise will be his veto pen, doesn’t even have to attend: He can text it in.