Counting the ways state leaders can trip over themselves

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Sunday, April 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Carson City — I awoke Friday morning in the capital to the startling sight of my car covered in snow and immediately understood: Hell had frozen over.

The question is which of the Legislative Building transgressions in an event-filled week had caused the capital to suddenly transform from a place where people were sipping wine alfresco to one where my car’s outside temperature gauge displayed 28 degrees. There were so many from which to choose, including a few happenings outside the capital with significance for the Gang of 63:

• Guess who’s coming to testify — and text: The Man Formerly Known as Governor made a rare appearance in the Legislative Building to testify on his omnibus energy bill. His appearance was emblematic of his leadership.

First, he apparently had made it clear he didn’t want to answer questions — a couple of senators did not show that deference — probably because he does not know all of the stuff packed into a bill, AB395, replete with contradictory and illogical ideas.

Second, he had barely started talking when The Man Who Texted Too much pulled out his phone, appeared to be receiving a text and perhaps replying, and then replaced it. Someone posted the video to YouTube and it has been ridiculed from here to D.C. You can see it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp7qRY-J5WM

Perhaps Ø should have stayed home in Reno.

• Lawmakers might be playing down to competition’s level: Legislative leaders intimated early in the week they would provide the fruits of their combing through the budget to show what programs would be restored. But then, fearful of being tagged to a number, they declined to present that list and instead provided ravenous Fourth Estaters with thin gruel that satisfied no one.

As one wag put it via e-mail, “So, first Dems say that they won’t say how much revenue they need to raise because they FIRST need to decide what funding levels are essential.

“NOW they say that they can’t comment on what funding levels are essential because they FIRST need to decide what the revenue will be.”

The best moment of the news conference was when businessman John Ritter said he believed the tax increase should be about $1 billion and the leaders tried mightily not to look at him as if he were Dr. Evil citing an outrageous number.

So who’s giving up what? During the same week in which it became clear that lawmakers will have to cut state salaries, albeit perhaps not as much as the administration’s 6 percent, SEIU and the county boasted about a deal in which the union members would accept smaller raises.

Granted, local governments have been handcuffed by existing contracts and have had to tread lighter than they might have otherwise. But the rhetoric of the locals and the unions in crowing about their big concessions is off-putting for many in the private sectors who had to forgo raises, accept cuts or lose their jobs.

And does anyone else see the irony, considering recent studies that show local government employees are the highest paid, that state employees have to take a cut and their better-paid counterparts still get raises?

No wonder some lawmakers have always balked at the idea of collective bargaining for state employees.

• A petition to stop a tax that doesn’t exist: Gubernatorial hopeful Mike Montandon, term-limited as North Las Vegas mayor, seized on the possibility of a sales tax on services to launch a petition drive against it. This may be smart politics — grab the anti-tax base from the Dead Man Walking who sometimes lives in the Governor’s Mansion and capture the hearts and minds of small businessmen.

But a sales tax on services has little chance of passage this time in Carson City, and even if it does, my guess is small businesses will be exempted from it or any business tax that manages to sneak through.

The cynicism of the move — to create a monster and then slay it — is the stuff that legislative lobbyists usually execute to justify their existence or to scare their clients into paying them more. But why stop there?

Maybe Joe Heck, the former state senator and other announced GOP gubernatorial contender, should start a petition drive against any increase in the payroll tax, another possible tax solution? Or maybe one against any business tax at all?

So while lawmakers deal with filling a $2 billion-plus hole, opportunists are limiting their options with political stunts that aren’t bound by the responsibility that lawmakers have in the next two months.

No wonder hell, aka the capital, was freezing over by the end of the week.