Welcome to the 2011 Legislature

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

The Session of Optimism begins Monday, with the governor saying Nevada is a stock he would buy (although his investment is limited by his penurious budget) and the Gang of 63 ready to spend as much as they can (although their investment is limited by their penurious courage).

Thus do all Legislatures begin, but Session ’11 even more so because this is the post-Gibbons Era, causing hope to spring from where it had evaporated. In person, Brian Sandoval is not Jim Gibbons; but — and here is where reality intrudes — on paper, he is Gibbons redux: inflexible, determined, intractable.

Alas, Sandoval has framed the session the way Gibbons framed sessions, with three words: No new taxes. And by doing so, he has not just diminished the discussion of the state’s future and escape from the economic sinkhole, he has catalyzed the same old dead-end, binary colloquy with the Gang of 63 that stretches for 120 days but goes nowhere. Or, even worse, leads the state’s toward a fiscal precipice.

Sandoval is as earnest and likable a governor as this state has seen and much more politically talented than many people realize. Rarely have so many supplicants gone into an elected official’s office, been rejected in their bid for money and felt as if they had just had one of the more pleasant experiences of their lives. I wish I could deny my daughter something and have her feel the same way.

With apologies to the 63 folks who convene across the courtyard Monday, none of them have Sandoval’s skills — a combination of likability, focus and drive. But here’s what they do have:

• A first-time yet term-limited Democratic speaker, John Oceguera, who is presumed not to have Barbara Buckley’s iron fist but believed to have more ambition for higher office.

• A state Senate majority leader, Steven Horsford, who is presumed to be equally ambitious and perhaps focused on the same short-term goal, Congressional District 4, and who has much less margin for error in an 11-10 upper house.

• A Legislature with 11 of 21 new senators (although seven had been in the Assembly) and 20 of 42 new assemblymen (although one had been in the Senate), a freshman class that will soon prove quite impressionable or quite rebellious.

• A difficult, if not impossible, pathway to the 28 and 14 votes needed to pass a tax package most legislators believe is necessary but almost none will articulate publicly — at least not yet — for fear of being tagged with the scarlet letter “T” for the rest of the session.

• A thicket of issues that involve the budget — education and social service spending, especially — as well as other political quicksand outside the fiscal plan, especially redistricting/reapportionment and public employee benefit reform.

Sandoval has presented lawmakers with a Spend-More-But-Tax-The-Same budget, with $1 billion in hidden or sleight-of-hand outlays. Lawmakers have been grumbling since the State of the State two weeks ago about the budgetary legerdemain and the dramatic cuts, but they have no answers.

Sandoval has said he wants an “open and honest debate” over the budget, but that is dishonest because his position is closed. So the session begins with the most powerful man in Carson City feigning interest in a debate with lawmakers and the Gang of 63 feigning that they don’t want to raise taxes. I have seen this movie before, and it does not end well.

And on the eve of one of the most sobering tasks in state annals, the nonsense has begun. Any Republican who reasonably says taxes should be on the table — that is, an open and honest debate should occur — is pelted with robocalls by conservatives who care only about narrowing not expanding the colloquy. If the no-tax side is so righteous, why won’t Sandoval and others debate the other side, sans the hollow rhetoric and sound bites?

I spoke last week to hundreds of business folks in Reno, many of whom seemed receptive to expanding the discussion to include taxes. I wondered if they all cared so much about higher education and economic development why they didn’t travel the 30 minutes to Carson City and tell lawmakers not to close their minds on taxes.

If their voices remain mute — and if other business folks who have chatted privately with Democrats about taxes don’t provide cover to Republican legislators to break with the governor — this will be an all-too-familiar sequel.

Sandoval wants to “let Nevada be Nevada again,” a phrase that still seems more ironic than optimistic. If the Legislature is the Legislature again, my greatest fear is that Nevada will be Nevada again — a place with vast potential only limited by its political leadership.