Scott Dickensheets: Can we hire Andre Agassi to do a benefit for Nevada?

By Scott Dickensheets

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

Two weeks ago, Nevadans voted Brian Sandoval into the Governor’s Mansion, deeply impressed by his non-Reidness and let’s-work-out-the-details-later approach to our budget crisis. Finally! A politician who tells it like it is.

And it seems Sandoval was equally impressed with our intelligence in electing him. If we’re smart enough to do that, what could we do to, oh, a potential $3 billion budget shortfall? High unemployment? Record foreclosures? A struggling education system?

Last week, Sandoval — or one of his transition-team pixies — sent out this Twitter post: “Send us your suggestions for how to improve state government and get Nevada working again,” followed by a link to his website, sandovaltransition.com/ideas.

Genius. Tapping the wisdom of the crowd! Or, if you want to be all cool and Internetish about it, “crowd-sourcing” the state’s problems. Never mind the unlikelihood of getting much useful input through that channel. By doing this, Sandoval has invited all Nevadans to join his transition team, and, later, if the state goes to hell, he’s got a couple million fellow scapegoats. You don’t like my plan? What brilliant idea did YOU submit?

As of Tuesday morning, a Sandoval rep said 138 ideas had come in via the website. This being Nevada, I assume most of them are variations of “Don’t tax me, bro!” There are probably some thoughtful, badly spelled suggestions about the need to cut the salaries, bennies and jobs of state workers. I guarantee someone has blamed illegal immigrants for everything.

A few lefties and environmentalists no doubt called for shaking down the mining industry.

Still, somewhere in there are probably a couple of good ideas, like shaking down the mining industry, even if Las Vegas is the dumbest city in America. (Reno, we’re counting on you!) ButGov.-elect Sandoval can always use more, and until you folks jam his website with your brilliance, here are my thoughts.

Make Nevada a nonprofit entity. A few 501(c)3 filings and suddenly Nevada is tax-deductible. Along with the possibility of foundation grants and individual donations, nonprofit status would allow us to harness the power of our state’s epic nonprofit fundraisers: Jerry Lewis and Andre Agassi. How better to fill state coffers and draw tourists than a telethon for per-pupil funding, perhaps, and a concert — Grand Slam for Highway Widening Near Elko?

Send a bunch of state workers to “Wealth Without Risk” seminars. No, really — I saw a fascinating infomercial about it this morning. Did you know that, using “tax lien certificates,” whatever those are, you can snap up houses for a few bucks and sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Think of the budgetary implications if hundreds of state employees flip a house a week and bank the profit in the general fund.

Sell Nevada’s old stuff. We’ve got state museums, historical archives, special collections and government closets full of material no one’s using. Even though a story in the Las Vegas Weekly a few years ago concluded that the state didn’t have enough valuable junk to eliminate the debt, with a PayPal account and some shipping containers, we could certainly draw it down considerably, and let the house-flipping take it from there.

You might be tempted to take these suggestions as light fantasy. Mild satire. Mere silliness. But keep this in mind: More than 95 percent of you voted for one candidate or another who promised the budget quagmire could be alleviated with neither new tax nor the end of civilization as we know it. So there’s ridiculous and there’s ridiculous.