Published Saturday, May 2, 2009 | 10:44 a.m.
Updated Saturday, May 2, 2009 | 11:12 a.m.
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- Economic Forum looks ahead two years, sees more signs of trouble (5-2-09)
- State falls $550 million short in funding governor’s budget (5-1-2009)
- In Henderson, Gibbons reiterates his anti-tax stance (5-1-2009)
- To be clear, Gibbons is against tax increase (5-1-2009)
- Lawmakers eye county dough (4-30-2009)
- Gibbons to propose more salary cuts, says he'll veto tax hikes (4-30-2009)
- Local battles on teacher pay cuts will follow action in Carson City (4-20-2009)
Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford said Saturday that the entire state will have to sacrifice in order to restore cuts to education, a day after the latest revenue projections showed the state’s budget gap has grown by hundreds of millions of dollars.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Horsford said the state has 45 percent less tax revenue than there was two years ago.
“I think we all understand that deep cuts will be necessary,” he said. “All of us will have to share in the pain these cuts will cause and all of us will have to share in the solutions to balance the rest of the budget.”
He once again decried Gov. Jim Gibbons' budget, and focused on the effects to schools and higher education.
Democrats have publicly been coy this session that tax increases will be necessary, even as they have been working behind the scenes to come up with a list of “add-backs” to the governor’s budget and to come up with a tax package.
Horsford’s speech was the clearest public recognition yet that the Legislature will try to increase taxes.
“We will not be able to restore all of the governor’s cuts; the budget gap is too large,” he said. “We will need to identify new revenue to fund education and health care for children and seniors.”
He said casinos, unions, mining companies, other corporations as well as taxpayers “will all have to share in this burden.”
Horsford said Gibbons’ cuts to higher education would “mean choosing between closing UNR or UNLV.”
“The governor has told us that he wants to fill the budget gap by slashing education to the bone. I will not do that. I will not balance this budget solely on the backs of our schools and our children,” he said.
The state’s Economic Forum, made up of five businessmen, drastically reduced the amount of money the state has to spend when they downgraded their predictions of revenue over the next two years.
"We have already cut services enough," said Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.
He said more tax revenue would have to be found.
"Everybody is going to cry," he said. The Legislature "has got to save education and save government."
Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said government can't be cut 44 percent.
"We will be crafting an alternate budget to the governor that will protect public safety and keep the universities open," she said. "We will have to have drastic cuts because of the shortfall. We will also have to raise some revenue."
She said she has been meeting with business leaders throughout the state, and not one who realized there was not "any alternative but to raise revenue."
She said that one silver lining of this budget crisis is there is less bickering between Democrats and Republicans.
Gibbons’ budget director Andrew Clinger said the state needs, after the use of federal stimulus, $550 million to fund the governor’s budget.
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