No ’08 version of ’50s ‘little mothers’

By David McGrath Schwartz (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 | 2 a.m.

State budget cuts that have gutted funding for education have exposed gaps in Nevada’s system for paying for government services. The mild response from Nevadans might also expose gaps in how residents respond to such crises.

A little history:

As the postwar Baby Boom began filling schools in the 1950s, Nevada parents took aim at the education system. Schools were underfunded and crowded, teachers were underpaid. The solutions they were offered involved sending children to schools in shifts or raising the age to enter kindergarten.

Instead of agreeing, hundreds showed up at PTA meetings. They organized. The “little mothers,” as they came to be known, lobbied legislators and generally raised a ruckus.

“You couldn’t turn a corner without one of the ‘little mothers’ buttonholing lawmakers in the hallways of the state house,” Mary Ellen Glass, a little mother, wrote in the book “Nevada’s Turbulent 50s.”

State officials listened.

Nevada eventually instituted the state’s first sales tax, of 2 percent, and more than doubled the tax on gambling.

Today, with Nevada facing possibly historic budget cuts, opposition occasionally has been passionate, but it has never been organized. No group is making a cohesive case to stop cuts that could be 14 percent or more.

To be sure, Nevada was a different place when the little mothers helped shape policy. It was less transient, more civic-minded and much smaller — population 285,000 by end of the 1950s.

“Everyone tended to know the people involved,” said Jim Hulse, who covered the Legislature from 1953 to 1958 as a reporter for the Nevada State Journal. “People today tend to be less close to the government than we were then.”

Hulse, a retired history professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, also noted that the governor, Republican Charlie Russell, worked with the Legislature to raise taxes. (The current governor, Jim Gibbons, has vowed to veto any tax increase.)

Still, Nevada had a fierce anti-tax element back then. When the sales tax started, opponents collected signatures for a referendum. To the surprise of many, more than 60 percent of voters said they approved of the tax.

As the 2009 legislative session approaches, talk of raising taxes is scarce, even if it is a way to avoid cuts needed to balance the budget amid a decline in gaming and other tax revenue.

Democratic legislators will hold town hall meetings on the state budget. But sources say they will not suggest raising taxes and instead will focus on broader issues about funding the state’s priorities.

In order to prevent the cuts, political observers say Nevadans would have to join a groundswell large enough to persuade two-thirds of lawmakers to increase taxes. It would take modern-day little mothers’ saying: This is what we want our government to look like and this is how we’ll pay for it.

Bob Fulkerson, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said he has heard grumbling about budget cuts. “Has it been anywhere near commensurate to the damage that is being done? Hell no.”

Mo Denis, a Las Vegas assemblyman and president of the 25,000-member Nevada Parent Teacher Association, said the state might yet see a grass-roots effort to address the budget trouble. His and other groups will argue that Nevada’s schools are already poorly funded, he said.

They will get louder and more visible as proposals come forward for specific cuts, he said.

“I don’t know if there’s enough will from the legislative bodies to overcome what the governor wants to do,” he said. “If there’s a groundswell, that will help.”