A rational state tax package in the offing

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

This is the stuff of which special sessions are made.

During a debate that painfully flashed back to The Great Tax Debacle of 2003 and portentously flashed forward to a potential disaster 80 days hence, state senators showed off the best and worst of the ever-oxymoronic legislative process as they passed a room tax.

The leaders of both caucuses rose to the occasion preceding the 16-5 vote — two more than needed to achieve the requisite two-thirds. Steven Horsford, the youngest majority leader in history, and Bill Raggio, the octogenarian in the twilight of a legendary career, hit on similar notes as they expressed near-revulsion at the initiative petition brought to them by a gaming cabal and the teachers union but an inescapable need to avoid creating a $232 million hole in the budget.

There was one significant difference, however, that may be a harbinger. Horsford, on the first critical vote of his tenure, held all of the Democrats. But Raggio could bring only three of his eight colleagues to vote for the room tax, though, despite a trademark Sir Bill floor speech.

For those who want a thoughtful tax package to pass this session, there’s reason for optimism. If the minority leader can bring three Republicans with him at session’s end, the package will pass.

But for those who want to see tax dreams immolated in a session-ending conflagration, they can take heart in the fact that the margin for error is not great. It is only March and moods rarely improve as sessions go on; a willingness to pass tax increases usually wanes as sessions progress.

The only point of unanimity Tuesday in the Legislature’s upper house seemed to be utter disdain for the teachers union, which lawmakers lamented had boxed them in by going to the initiative process and usurping their rightful role of setting policy. This is at once truthful and hypocritical.

Many of these lawmakers and too many of their predecessors have been party to a collective abdication of duty for decades in setting tax policy. They have promulgated irrational, incoherent amalgams of cobbled-together, eleventh-hour packages that have been short-term fixes, often causing long-term problems. For these folks to complain bitterly about a policy right being taken away that they long ago forfeited was a little much to bear.

The union has brought some of the scorn upon itself by developing a reputation of being more concerned with the quality of its members’ paychecks than with the quality of education. The merit of getting paid as much as they can has seemed paramount, not raising the per pupil funding to a reasonable level. But if the teachers union became desperate because lawmakers would show up when they wanted campaign help and take a powder when it came time to create comprehensive, responsible tax policy, how much of the blame should the organization shoulder for sins of past Legislatures?

Take the nadir of 2003, which was redolent on the Senate floor Tuesday, even invoked by Democrat Terry Care, who clearly remains bitter about how that session collapsed into bickering as multiple tax plans were incinerated before one finally passed July 21. Many lawmakers objected to Gov. Kenny Guinn’s gross receipts tax. But whether you liked that idea or not, it was at least … an idea.

What lawmakers eventually passed, raising about the same amount of money Guinn wanted, was an illogical mishmash that did not qualify as policy but hit an arbitrary number. It was, as Monty Python might have said, a travesty wrapped in an outrage encased in an embarrassment.

Horsford and, even more so, Raggio gave me hope Tuesday that their steadfastness will stiffen enough spines by the end so 2009 will not be 2003 redux.

“This is the first of many difficult choices we will have to make this session,” Horsford said on the floor.

Raggio was even more pointed. “My concern is the survival of this state,” he said. “We need to provide essential services. This will go the first step toward doing that.”

Perhaps. But what is the last step?

Gov. Jim Gibbons seemed to cement his irrelevance Tuesday by refusing to sign something he had put in his own budget(!), allowing it to become law without his signature and surely causing more than a few lawmakers to seethe. He wants the room tax money but not the responsibility. His action could encourage bipartisan cohesion to pass a tax package.

In 2003 there were two special sessions and a result nobody was proud of. Let’s hope we escape 2009 with only half that many specials and a tax package that, at the very least, makes sense.