Time to swing for the fences in Nevada

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, Aug. 7, 2011 | 2 a.m.

Watching the predictable, partisan reaction to the national unemployment rate and the jobs report last week made me wonder if people in Nevada know just how bad we have it.

We can only dream of 9.1 percent unemployment here. The last time we were that low? George W. Bush was languishing as a lame duck, then-Gov. Jim Gibbons was preparing to call a special session to deal with a budget shortfall and Dina Titus was basking in her victory over Rep. Jon Porter.

A political lifetime ago.

Unemployment in Nevada is now at 12.4 percent, actually down from nearly 15 percent late last year. Why? I have no patience for the pointless partisan blame game, especially here where neither Republicans nor Democrats have provided the leadership to help cushion Nevada’s economy when national recessions hit or chart a reasonable path forward.

But have no fear. Unlike that dysfunctional Congress with unprecedented unpopularity, in Nevada the parties united to revamp the economic development structure so businesses will flock here. Or not.

So as the state’s seminal industry looks to China, two Nevada cities (North Las Vegas and Reno) edge toward a financial precipice and the mining industry prepares to celebrate its tax-free, $1,600-an-ounce golden year at Lake Tahoe, it’s hard to see how far we’ve come in 25 years, much less since unemployment was at 9 percent in those halcyon, late days of 2008.

Don’t misunderstand: Gov. Brian Sandoval taking the lead on economic development through the celebrated Assembly Bill 449 and bringing in some fine minds, especially entrepreneur Steve Hill, may make some sense. But all that bill does is change the structure (sorry, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki) and try to consolidate the disparate economic diversification elements.

These folks still have to sell a product that is less battle born than stillborn, slowly atrophying from years of not-so-benign neglect and ravaged by a recession/depression that, as all we Cassandras warned for decades, would damage disproportionately and expose the inherent infirmities of the state’s fiscal infrastructure.

I take no pleasure in being right — and I was far from alone. It wasn’t rocket science: You build an economy on the narrowest of tax bases — gaming and a thinly spread sales tax — and allow sound bites (“no new taxes”) to supplant sound thinking and you arrive on the brink of disaster.

That’s where we are. I don’t discount the new top-down economic development structure having some benefits, just as I don’t dismiss the ability of Zappos coming to downtown Las Vegas making some difference (and building wraps, too!). But this is small ball when swinging for the fences is required.

For too long, Nevada has been led by capable — or not so capable — stewards, with few bold leaders and nary a visionary in sight. We have been relegated to binary choices — to tax or not to tax, to reform schools or not to reform schools, to fund education or not to fund education.

There have been few nuanced policy discussions about how the state should raise and spend money, how the tax structure needs to be revamped (much more than the economic development structure) and how Nevada’s tourism-dependent economy needs to adapt to a protean, global gaming environment.

There are many elements that could save — or kill — us. Energy exportation and online poker come to mind.

But someone needs to think outside the box before Nevada is in a box. The late Kenny Guinn used to talk about how Nevada never had a long-term strategic plan, but his attempts lost steam because of hopeless partisanship in the Legislature. And now the collective failure of the leadership in Carson City this cycle, only leavened by the serendipitous intervention of the state Supreme Court, is cause for further cynicism. Extending taxes solved a short-term problem and did no lasting damage, the inane broadsides from the far right notwithstanding.

Brief digression: Does it amuse anyone else that those who presided over the 2011 mess are being chatted about for vice president (Sandoval) and Congress (state Sens. Steven Horsford and Ruben Kihuen and Speaker John Oceguera)? They are proud of what they achieved?

Fact is we might still be in Carson City or court trying to sort out the tattered Nevada budget if the high court had not provided the deus ex machina, an escape hatch for a governor and Legislature at a hopeless impasse. But the resolution was no real resolution, only delaying the inevitable (another fiscal crisis) and the execrable (a tax initiative on the ballot).

So in Nevada, our dreams remain small. We only dream of having 9.1 percent unemployment, of having our houses worth what we paid for them, of having minimal damage done from Carson City.

I wonder when we will finally wake up.