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Monday, Oct. 27, 2008 | 4:39 p.m.
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Major Nevada casinos and a teachers union delivered more than 130,000 signatures Monday in support of a plan to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for public schools through a hotel room tax increase in the Reno and Las Vegas areas.
The Committee for the Advancement of Education in Nevada, made up of the Nevada State Education Association, Wynn Resorts, Harrah's Entertainment and Station Casinos, more than doubled the necessary minimum of 58,628 signatures of voters around the state.
Advocates of the plan said all but about 30,000 of the signatures were delivered to election officials in Las Vegas, and more than 18,000 were delivered in Reno.
The CAEN plan provides for room tax increases of up to 3 percent, to a maximum rate of 13 percent. If the signatures are verified by election officials, it would be sent to the 2009 Legislature.
If lawmakers don't approve it within 40 days, the plan goes to a public vote in 2010. If legislators decide to approve the plan, it could take effect by July 1. It would take a two-thirds affirmative vote of the Legislature to implement the increase.
"Nevadans are sending a message to the Legislature that education funding is a critical issues," said Lynn Warne, president of the teachers' association. She added that petition-signers also need to support similar advisory questions up for votes in Washoe and Clark counties.
Jan Jones, senior vice president for Harrah's Entertainment and also former mayor of Las Vegas, said the signatures show "the public clearly has an appetite for supporting education."
The cooperative effort was launched as part of a deal that resulted in teachers dropping their earlier initiative to get money for education through a 44 percent increase in casino taxes.
Warne has said the room tax plan would raise as much as $180 million a year based on current hotel room totals in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, and the amount would increase as more rooms are built.
Under the proposal, proceeds from the room tax hike would at first help make up for budget cuts that have been required because of a worsening state revenue shortfall. Later, the proceeds could be used to supplement regular K-12 funding approved by state lawmakers.
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Nice, way to support an industry that is your largest state employer. No wonder the state so heavily backs Obama, similar sorts of tactics.
Maybe the citizens of Nevada should man up and start paying income tax, just like the rest of the world....
yeah, yeah, we all pay sales taxes and property taxes as well.
Why is this country so short-term focused, and unable to see the long-term implications of their actions? (Sub-prime, I/O mortgage holders, I am looking at you and pointing)
We visit Las Vegas twice a year and I am shocked to say the least that making visitors pay more room tax to pay for the school system is another way to run more business away.
We visitors pay our own school tax in the states we live in, so why should we be expected to pay yours too?
Your vistor buisness is down...this would be another way to make sure it continues on it's downward slop. Everything in Las Vegas has gotten so high, especially on the Strip. Way to go on running off the middle-class gamblers, the back-bone or your business. The past few visits we have found more and more hidden fees in our room rates upon checking out, this would be another slap in the face to Las Vegas's core income.
We use to visit 3 to 4 times a year, but not at the cost of room rates lately; I guess we will have to visit only once a year...or, maybe we will find some other place to gamble with all the new places popping up all over America.