If Legislature weren’t in such a fix

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

Carson City

This time of year I find very little funny about legislative sessions. But this would merit one of those obnoxious emoticons, if not an even more annoying LOL:

Lawmakers have a little more than a week to fully vet a historically large tax package and serve it up to The Man Formerly Known as Governor so he can gleefully send it back to them with a veto message that will serve as the kickoff of his reelection bid.

A real knee-slapper, that is.

Oh, and this comedy routine is never-ending. Lawmakers have been meeting in the supersecret “core group” meetings, insisting that no tax discussions have taken place, while the core has proved so porous that everyone knows what has happened moments after they break up — exposing that they dissembled about not talking taxes.

As Pseudolus once put it, “Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone, a comedy tonight.”

But a funny thing could happen on the way to a tax increase: Lawmakers have left themselves so little margin for error, they are so desperate not to repeat the “mistakes” of the The Great Tax Non-Debate of 2003, that they have no backup plan if they can’t get the package to Ø in time for The Man Formerly Known as Governor to veto and then for them to override before June 1.

And so the “core group” desperately tried to finish the budget Tuesday, to find more money for higher ed, knowing that with every day that passes, they have less of a chance of making deadlines. Making deadlines is not a skill cultivated in this arena.

Amid all the whining, especially from my Fourth Estate colleagues and especially conservative editorialists who would bludgeon a tax whether it was discussed publicly or privately, is the reality that these closed-door meetings are a necessary evil for any large government body. I know this is heresy from a journalist, but these meetings don’t offend me. (Hint, hint, now leak just to me, closed-door people.)

I also can’t help but chuckle at the business lobbyists who have whined all session to anyone who would listen about the tight ship being run, especially by Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, that the lobbyists don’t have more of a say. (Cue joke about how much smoother things used to run when the lobbyists had more say, the Carson City analogue to the old saw about things running better when the mob controlled Vegas. Wait, who is mayor again?)

The issue with these core group meetings is not that they exist but that they don’t form earlier. This silly conceit that putting a tax package out early creates more opposition and a chance to shoot down ideas is an abdication of responsibility by the leadership. Did they have so little faith in their ability to sell what they believe is right — preserving essential services by funding them with taxes — that they have to ram and jam in the final days?

Getting to a consensus number — $700 million or $800 million, I’d guess — will not be nearly so difficult as figuring a way to pay for it that can garner two-thirds in each house. If 2003 taught us anything, it is that yes votes become no votes overnight — and votes going in the other direction are much more difficult to achieve.

The one-week-and-counting clock begins ticking as the inevitable fraying has occurred not between Democrats and Republicans but between the leaders of both houses. Buckley, thought to be more liberal than Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford as the session began, reportedly was furious at her counterpart for holding up the higher ed budget over 1 percentage point. Now he looks like the one who cares more about education and she looks like she wanted the more conservative side of the deal.

Horsford and Buckley had split over whether the tax base could be broadened this session — or at least on how it should be broadened. Horsford also has a greater internal problem — holding his 11 members together to get to two-thirds with a couple of Republicans.

Horsford also wants to be majority leader again next session, and Buckley wants to be governor next session, so their agendas may not dovetail in the final days. That could prove problematic for both because if the tax plan has 40 out of 40 Democratic votes and two out of 23 Republican votes, can it rightly be called a Democratic package? I think so.

Neither Buckley nor Horsford wants that. And if that happens, neither will be laughing come 2010.