Rory Reid hits duo of likely rivals with 1 stone

By J. Patrick Coolican

Thursday, June 18, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The 2010 governor’s race began in earnest this week as Rory Reid offered an opening sally against both his Democratic and Republican opposition.

Discussing the recently completed legislative session, Reid, the Democratic chairman of the Clark County Commission, was most critical of Gov. Jim Gibbons, the first-term Republican.

“Well, I think this legislative session shows what happens when there’s a leadership vacuum in the Governor’s Mansion,” he said. The governor, he said, was detached and offered no vision or plan for the future on key issues such as education, energy and economic development.

Reid’s critique amounted to a double bank shot, as he also made a subtle dig at Democrats in the Legislature, specifically outgoing Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, also a likely candidate for governor.

“Someone has to lead and set direction so you don’t end up with short-term thinking and last-minute approaches to problems,” he said.

The implication was clear: Absent leadership from the governor, the Legislature had settled on “short-term thinking” and “last minute approaches.”

He said the Legislature did not lay out a comprehensive vision for the future and was not aggressive enough in pushing renewable energy or education plans.

(Energy experts disagree with Reid’s assessment. With tax incentives and other programs in place, Nevada is well-positioned to be a leader in renewable energy development, experts said.)

Reid also criticized the $130 million diversion of property taxes from local government to state coffers.

“It’s going to be significant,” he said of the loss of money. “Especially to the most vulnerable — seniors, the sick and the most vulnerable. No one knows the impact because no one seems to have considered it,” he said.

For her part, Buckley was happy to agree with Reid that Gibbons had provided no leadership.

“The governor was absent,” she said of Gibbons.

But Buckley also said the Legislature had done a “phenomenal” job protecting important funding for K-12 and higher education, as well as health and human services for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

At this point, Buckley and Reid are working up policy prescriptions for getting Nevada out of the economic morass and improving worst-in-the-nation rankings on key measures of health and welfare.

In the meantime, there’s clever gamesmanship, which is the beginning of a yearlong campaign for the Democratic nomination that will likely have several chapters.

The recently completed legislative session will serve as a kind of prequel.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature this month concluded its business by rejecting the governor’s budget, which would have cut higher education funding by 36 percent and state worker and teacher pay by 6 percent. Instead, the Legislature, including a majority of Senate Republicans, supported about $1 billion in taxes to restore two-thirds of higher education funding and reduce the state worker pay cuts to 4.6 percent.

Overall the Legislature faced a 44 percent budget shortfall because of rising demand for health and social services by increasing numbers of impoverished, as well as rapidly declining tax revenue because of the recession.

In exchange for agreeing to the tax hike, Republicans demanded changes in public employee pension and benefit systems to reduce the state’s long-term liability. Also, the tax increases, which came in the form of payroll, sales and hotel room levies, will sunset, likely forcing the Legislature to deal with another fiscal crisis in two years.

Liberals, the very voters Buckley and Reid will be fighting for, groused that the Legislature should have enacted a broad-based business tax and did not do enough to force the mining industry, which is enjoying significant profits because of the soaring cost of gold, to pay more.

Buckley gave a robust defense of the Legislature.

What state lawmakers had to do during such a deep crisis, Buckley said, “it’s never been done in this state, and it’s a tribute to Republicans and Democrats coming together to say, ‘We’re not going to allow one man to destroy decades of progress our state has made,’ ” she said, referring to Gibbons.

She also pointed to renewable energy legislation, mediation for homeowners facing foreclosure and budget reforms that will hopefully prevent a repeat of the current crisis as other achievements.

Dan Burns, a spokesman for the governor, has been sharply critical of Buckley for the tax increases. He also teed off on Reid: “To have Commissioner Reid questioning the leadership of the governor during the session is way, way off base and shows his lack of understanding of how the process works here,” he said.

Burns continued: “I guess we’re in the political season so, it’s time to start saying political things. Whether they’re true or not doesn’t seem to matter.”

Burns then previewed a line of attack that Reid will surely face — management of the troubled county hospital, University Medical Center: “Who is in charge of the county hospital? If the chair of Clark County Commission wants to criticize what is happening in the Legislature, maybe he ought to look in his own back yard first,” he said.