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StumbleReid says he won’t support education funding waiver
Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun
Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday at the John C. Kish Boys & Girls Club, Sen. Harry Reid, an alumnus of the Henderson club, greets children, from left, Jordan Heines, 7, Yolanda Perez, 6, and Mary Calahan, 7.
Published Thursday, April 9, 2009 | 1:44 p.m.
Updated Thursday, April 9, 2009 | 5:50 p.m.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today he will not support Nevada’s request for an education funding waiver in the state’s bid for economic stimulus money.
The state has requested a waiver from the requirement that it fund public education at 2006 levels to qualify for the stimulus money. He pointed out that the state has grown dramatically since then and said the Legislature must find a way to provide the funding over the next two years.
The economic stimulus package could bring $396 million to Nevada over the next two years. But the requirement that the state fund education at 2006 levels has been a stumbling block. The governor’s budget meets the requirement at the elementary and secondary levels, but $268 million would have to be restored to higher education to qualify.
Reid’s comments came after leaders of the Nevada Legislature talked to the Secretary of Education’s office about the stimulus money and waiver process via a conference call Reid set up.
“I believe in the public school system. I have grandchildren in it, and I want to take care of them,” said Reid, who spoke Thursday at the grand opening of the John C. Kish Boys & Girls Club in Henderson. He was there to be inducted into the Boys & Girls Club of America Hall of Fame.
When asked if he had any advice for the governor or Legislature, he said, “No, they’re going to have to work that out on their own. I have enough to do in Washington. All we ask is they take care of kids at the 2006 level.”
Reid spokesman Tom Brede issued a clarification hours after news of the senator’s comments became public.
“Ultimately whether to grant Nevada a waiver is a decision for the Secretary of Education to make based on a clearly defined process,” Brede said. “The state will either qualify or it won’t.”
A spokesman for Gov. Jim Gibbons said Reid was in effect suggesting that the state raise taxes during a recession.
“New taxes will kill jobs at a time when we are trying to stimulate the economy,” spokesman Daniel Burns said. He called Reid’s position “partisan politics at work.”
Burns said the state has letters of support for its waiver from Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., and Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education declaring its intention to file for a waiver. He said the forms and guidelines for waivers have not been written yet.
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Good for you, Senator Reid. This is a surprisingly gutsy statement to your home state to get on the horse and put up state equity like the other 49.
Hispanics will support education in Nevada, and they are a big part of it's future, including leadership. It is time for leadership, mining, gaming and retirees to also support Nevada's future.
Thank you.
I agree with Gregory. It's time for Nevadans to start paying for the services they use, and which will create a better future. It's time we stop depending on other people's money. I'm continually amazed by this state--the right-wingers cry about the federal government, but Nevada is, in effect, a welfare state--it has historically been one of the top states in the country to receive federal money to survive. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but its childish to continue to think we can have something for nothing.
Absolutely false, sfrank.
Nevada received 65 cents in federal spending for every dollar paid in federal taxes in 2005 -- 49th in the nation. Many traditionally Republican states are incredibly hypocritical on this issue, but Nevada is not one of them.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/sh...
"I've got too much to do in Washington"? With all due respect, Sen. Reid, you were elected to represent the interests of Nevada constituents. If you cannot do that while serving as Senate Majority Leader, please surrender that position immediately.
I can understand (sort of) the point he's trying to make, but his response sounds incredibly dismissive and condescending.
TAG, we get pocket change back from the federal government partially because we fail to fund schools and social services at a level which would allow matching funds.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/feb...
I'll hold Reid accountable for what happens in Washington, but state funding is the sole responsibility of the Legislature and Governor. If they won't come to the plate, it doesn't follow to blame Reid.
But that won't stop those with Reid Derangement Syndrome from trying to place him with all the blame, apparently.
Reid Derangement Syndrome? ksand99, can you point to even a single remark I've ever made on this site that is even remotely conservative?
I'd be willing to wager that I'm a heck of a lot more liberal than Harry Reid. And if I hold off on criticizing Sen. Reid solely because I share a political party with him, I'm not much better than the Kool-Aid-drinking Republicans that drove me crazy during the Bush years.
Why should Washington subsidize Nevada's underfunded schools?
How can Congress justifiably say, "Washington State's residents are taxed 2-3 times what Nevada's residents are, but Nevada's residents should receive just as much federal support as Washington's?"
Nevada sends a message with its ridiculously low taxes. "We don't care." Congress SHOULD fund the states that fund themselves first, and fund cheapskate states like Nevada last.
When state legislative leaders where crying wolf that the state would have to raise taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars during the "stimulus" passage period, Reid laugh and told them not to worry.
"You are crying wolf before the wolf is at the door," Reid responded in the call from Washington, D.C., with state legislators, Gov. Jim Gibbons and local government officials. "
Hey, Reid.....the wolf is at the door and you giving the big finger to thousands of jobs that are risk if the state has to raise hundreds of milllions in new taxes just to get "stimulus" funds.
I guess it is not so "stimulus" anymore.
Reid and the Democrats just want to tax and spend..tax and spend...tax and spend....and then tax and spend.
There's no way to sugarcoat this one--Nevada has been getting by on lots of other people's money for a long time. We really don't want to pay taxes here. We, of course, want federal dollars for our schools, but we don't want to pay our fair share. It's a abomination. Don't let your kids know how cheap you are! It's their future we are not funding.
I am not aware of anyone preventing all you tax proponents from sending more of your wealth and income to the State voluntarily, are you?
WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Nevada doesn't get enough federal money! WELL HEAR THIS YOU WHINERS!! A lot of federal money REQUIRES STATE MATCHING FUNDS. ALL OTHER STATES DO IT! We don't, and so WE GET LESS. WE'RE CHEAP. Cowboy Up! Pay up! Don't blame Reid because Nevada doesn't believe in taxes....ONLY HANDOUTS!
As long as you agree not to drive on the roads, Harley, or send your kids to the schools, or use any of the water that comes out of the pipes in your house, or accept medicare, or let the firefighters put out a fire on your property, or let the police find the guy that robbed you...If you agree not to use any of the services that taxes pay for, I am more than willing to let you opt out. Good luck living without a society.
Between 2001-2008 NSHE was growing at a rate that was 3 times faster than the annual growth rate in inflation, so it is hardly fair to put all that burden back on taxpayers.
http://npri.org/docLib/20090327_Fast_Fac...
TAG, don't take the DRS comment as being aimed at you. It wasn't. It was earmarked for the neiman1/jfnance32/getalife crowd that will blame any and all ills on Reid.
I wonder if the system of higher education's expansion have anything to do with expanded enrollment due to the millennium scholarship? Hmmmmmm.
This debate thread is rich.
Yes, by all means, let's restructure our state's tax system to ensure a broader, more stable source of revenue for state services.
New income tax? I'm all for that. Broad-based business tax? Great idea. A real mining tax! Whoopee! Bring it on!
We talk about this EVERY SINGLE TIME a hiccup in the state economy puts us in a huge budget hole. We all talk a whole lot about how great it would be if we could finally figure out how to fix our tax structure. And guess what happens? We hike the gaming and sales tax up a bit and call it a day. Yay! Band-Aid applied! Problem solved!
Perhaps I'm a fatalist, but I've long ago stopped believing the crew up in Carson City will do one blessed thing to fix our problems long term. This session will end exactly as the ones that came before -- a Band-Aid solution and continued instability.
What I do not want to see is our kids and our schools getting thrown under the bus in a game of brinksmanship. If that stimulus money doesn't arrive, K-12 and higher ed are hosed.
Yes, it will be a powerful point to make to those in Nevada who detest taxes. But the price to score that point is too high for my tastes.
It's cool, ksand99. But hope you can understand why I'd be a bit touchy at getting lumped into neiman1's Army! :)
Patrick - Do those numbers include capital construction costs? It's nice to say "Nevada's government grew at XX times the rate of growth," but if you consider that you need a $50 million building to house a 70% increase in new employees to match your 70% growth rate, it becomes considerably more expensive to grow.
I am not aware of anyone preventing parents of students participating in the public school system from voluntarily paying more for their child's education, are you?
Oh, I completely understand, TAG. Sorry for the crossed wires.
Enrollment at UNLV alone skyrocketed 15% in the same date range, while UNR also experience double-digit growth in student enrollment. No doubt those numbers would be even larger if not for the 2005 decision to raise the GPA standard that resulted in double-digit drops in enrollment the following year.
Figures that Patrick seemed to omit for some reason...
Good post, TAG!
It's not just a hiccup this time. Las Vegas once drew 37 million folks a year here. Today it's way down. Nobody's got the dough to throw around like they used to. It's a different ball game.
Taxes will go up, or Nevada is down the tubes. Break it up into income, business, mining, gaming, rooms whatever. The point is the bottom line must rise or we are all going to have a state as vacuous as Jimbo's brain. SFrank makes pretty good sense when he itemizes the benefits of taxation which Harley chooses not to go for.
The trouble is the kids. Their world is going away quickly. We are putting a huge burden on them because of our unwillingness to put out the dough now.
Tag, the graph shows Total NSHE spending and General Fund NSHE spending.
As for per pupil expenditures NSHE per pupil expenditures will decline to about 2001-2002 levels. According to economies of scale per pupil expenditures should decline as we put more students into the schools. So either NSHE is becoming more efficient (or being forced too) or it is losing funds and never was very efficient to begin with.
While explosive population growth will lead to constructing more buildings, building Greenspun Hall doesn't help the case, http://npri.org/blog/higher-priced-educa...
Basically, why on earth did we need a $780 a square foot building.
Priorities, priorities. We have limited resources and that is the big priority.
air,
Explain to me how the economy can recover when we dump the tax burdon back onto the local economy?
Furthermore, explain why on earth we would increase taxes to increase spending when our government has no incentive to spend the money wisely and no incentive to even provide us a quality service? Are you just a fan of paying more money for something just for the sake of paying more or do you actually want the best quality at the best price?
Increasing taxes on multinational mining corporations and retailers like WalMart are not the same as taxing small businesses in the local community. Those are the entities that should be paying more because they do benefit from local services (e.g. roads to drive on, water), even though the profits go elsewhere.
Our government has produced some of the greatest services in the world (again, roads, healthy water system), as have our business. The point is balance. And if you are one of the types that thinks private enterprise should run everything, see AIG.
UNLV UNR
2008 20109 12827
2007 20020 12544
2006 20221 12386
2005 20569 12660
2004 20077 12451
Full Time Student equivalent enrollment during the fall semester. There is no double digit drop in enrollment. Data taken from NSHE
AIG was a highly regulated corporation that actively sought special privileges from the government....hardly a hallmark of free market capitalism - that is called corporatism.
Seems Patrick can't even count, or read.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/sep...
UNLV total enrollment in Fall 08 was 27454.
UNR total enrollment in Fall 08 was 16867.
As to the drop in enrollment,
"When admission requirements were raised from a 2.5 GPA in 2005 to a 2.75 in fall 2006, total enrollment dropped by 14.4 percent at UNLV and by 2.6 percent at UNR. Hispanic student enrollment at the Reno campus fell by 10.6 percent."
See how Patrick's "statistics" lie? He cherrypicks FT students, rather than total students.
Define "highly regulated."
I challenge anyone to list all the local, state and federal taxes and fees currently mandated upon Nevadans.
Anyone?
LOL
Of course the NPRI goon is going to ignore 24% of the enrollment at UNLV. How else would he be able to twist his numbers to fit his rhetoric?
It's not like a significant number of students enrolled at UNLV take classes part-time or anything. Where are we, Vegas?
Something else Patrick left out in his description of the Greenspun building?
"The Greenspun Family Foundation contributed $37 million toward the design and construction of this project -- the largest single donation in UNLV history."
http://www.bdcnetwork.com/article/CA6644...
The Greenspuns donated more than $37 million of that total building cost? Taxpayers didn't pay anything toward more than a third of the building? Suddenly, $780 per square foot becomes $472.50 per square foot.
I wonder why Patrick didn't bother to mention the fact that almost 40% of the funding for Greenspun Hall came from private funds?
More "statistical" lies from NPRI.
Nevada is ranked 21st in the nation in state funds per student.
Nevada is ranked 51st in the nation in getting federal funds per student.
I guess Reid is not doing his job.
http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/06f33...
Patrick, I have several contacts employed by the CCSD that see the waste and funding abuse on a daily bases as well as how statistics are manipulated to support specific agandas while conceaning the overall picture's objectivity not to mention the outright lies by administrators.
My contacts won't even allow their own children to attend the schools they teach at.
These taxing morons that support a never ending continuation of additional public school system funding have no idea what's really going on with the current funds already within the system.
A system badly in need of an independent audit to reveal the truth.
The bottom line: The lawmakers are being fleeced, the tax paying public ripped-off and the students the resulting vicitims of the CCSD.
Ksand you always make me chuckle.
Sit back and take a deep breath...the Greenspun donation could have built a building by itself and it still would have been palatial. Or they could have built 2 fairly expensive buildings. Or the Greenspun family could have taken that money and created a scholarship program that allowed 75-150 low income children a free ride to UNLV from now until eternity.
What did they do instead? Build the most expensive building possible...until Mayor Gordon came up with an idea to build a new city hall that is (that will be over $900 a square foot).
Ksand: "UNLV total enrollment in Fall 08 was 27454.
UNR total enrollment in Fall 08 was 16867.
As to the drop in enrollment,
See how Patrick's "statistics" lie? He cherrypicks FT students, rather than total students."
Sorry, but the UNLV administration prefers to use FTE, full time student equivalent. This converts part-time students into full time students. FTE is the standard student enrollment measure for statistical purposes across the country. That is not cherrypicking, that is being statistically honest.
Nice try (turn down the dogma too chief).
sfrank, well from what I understand AIG was already under the supervision of the State of New York and the federal Office of Thrift Supervision.
I wonder what the exact number of rules and regulations governing them were...its alot more than zero that some people seem to think.
Countdown to Election Day 2010: 571 days
Patrick,
Dumping the burden on ourselves is what taxation is all about. It's ownership of the problem and the solution. Our past practice has been simply to dump our tax burden on visitors. That doesn't work anymore because nobody visits anymore.
If we could survive without taxes, we would not need to burden ourselves (or anyone else!). But the truth is that we need to fix the roads, sweep the streets, educate the kids, pump the poop, etc. It means taxes, Patrick. The poop will not pump itself!
For decades, Nevadans have gotten by with the wealth of others visiting Vegas. The new day is upon us; time to pay our own way! Nobody wants to come here and pay for the pump anymore. Canadians are making off with our gold. Forty kids per class are screaming about their bad home life. Mom and dad fight. Everybody's hungry and tired. Nobody's got work. Roads crumble. Society languishes. And you don't think we need to tax our population to get out of this mess? What do you propose, divine intervention?
We could use a few less underwater basket weavers.
If the people hurt then the government should hurt more.
No one is preventing airweare and his tax em crusaders from voluntarily contributing more of their wealth and income to support the government socialized programs they endorse.
That's right...Harry has about a year and change before he is off to some Del Webb 55+ gated retirement.
I will not miss him.
Just pray he does not get on the HOA board.
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today he will not support Nevada's request for an education funding waiver in the state's bid for economic stimulus money."
Harry Reid is to busy to deal with the state he represents.
Get the facts. Visit the following websites:
aBadReid.com
watchinReid.com
NoMoreReid.com
Knowledge is power!
REID IS OUT, THE MONEY SHOULD GO TO THE SCHOOLS!
RESIGN, YOU MONEY GRUBBER.