Unraveling the lies Nevada’s leaders have told us

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.

“Whereas Nevada is now facing the worst economic crisis in the State’s history…”

— From Gov. Jim Gibbons’ special session proclamation

At this somber moment in Nevada’s annus horribilis, less than a week before Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Gang of 63 gather to solemnly continue the dismantling of the state’s tangible and intangible infrastructure, perhaps we should consider some of the lies our leaders have told us:

• Untruth No. 1 — The governor has no idea what he is doing.

Au contraire. Gibbons knows exactly what he is doing, bolstered by a staff that has a firm handle on one of the strongest executive branch states in the country. He is doing more than trying to remake Nevada in the image of Gibbonsworld — one-dimensional, uncreative and, ultimately, hopeless. He is, as he said in his State of the State 10 days ago, reinventing the state’s government and its education system — if the Legislature continues its prostrate ways — so it devolves from barely passable to barely surviving. “The governor has a plan,” one insider said. “It’s in black and white.” Actually, it’s mostly red, but you get the point.

• Untruth No. 2 — The Legislature has a plan.

The only strategy so far is, as Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford put it late Tuesday, to reject what he called “irresponsible and mean-spirited” cuts in education. “I’m confident this plan today, as proposed, will not be approved,” he told me. We’ll see. It does appear that a majority of lawmakers are determined to come up with alternatives — but enough for a veto-proof majority? And even if they were to override the governor, Gibbons could simply wait a couple of weeks and … call them back again. Yes, some of the Democratic leadership has been trying to extract money from mining and gaming — both of which will pony up either out of corporate responsibility or corporate fear. A teachers union survey released Tuesday indicates people would love to tax gaming and mining, even in a recession, seeing only the high price of gold and the low rate of gaming taxation. But that is still just a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. And at some point, as the Culinary’s D. Taylor has been saying, lawmakers will have to do better than simply declaring, “The governor is bad.”

• Untruth No. 3 — There are no tax increases being considered.

Only a governor who claimed, despite a $300 million room tax increase in his budget, that he had never proposed tax increases, could claim changing how mining deductions are calculated to raise money is not what it obviously is: A tax increase. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt on enforcing collection of taxes on Internet sales, which some Nevadans will see as a loophole-closing that increases their taxes, Gibbons cannot credibly argue that this is not a tax on mining.

This is the danger of sloganeering masquerading as governing, although, as Bush 41, whose lips were read to his ultimate political demise, discovered. Democrats have played along with the “no new taxes” chant, too. But if gaming, through fees to help fund gaming control, and mining, through some jiggering of how it helps fund the state treasury, end up paying more when the session ends, it’s only a matter of semantics if taxes were increased. (By the way, the Gibbons no-new-taxes exception — if the industry says it’s OK, it doesn’t break the pledge — is utter sophistry. If taxes are bad policy, who cares if the industry agrees to be taxed?)

The issue here, of course, is that other big businesses with much greater profit margins — even now — will be held harmless because that tax increase would be more naked than the tricky ones about to be foisted on the gaming and mining folks. Both should pay more — but so should everyone else.

• Untruth No. 4 — This should take a few days, max.

Yes, we know the governor has blocked out four days on his calendar. But he has nothing to lose from an extended session, or repeated specials. And Horsford knows it: “This is nothing more than the governor appealing to a very narrow base to save his political career at the expense of the rest of us.”

Even if he’s right — and most lawmakers and many others agree — it’s good to be the king, or the equivalent thereof in a state where executive power is nearly absolute. Horsford said the Gang of 63 will come up with a plan before the session, an alternative to the Gibbons scheme that does less harm. Maybe. But will the spring flowers have replaced snow in the capital before anything gets passed?