A cold capital with a storm brewing

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

It was cold up here Tuesday and I felt a chill go through my bones. And then I stepped outside the Legislative Building into the 36-degree weather.

It’s that time of year in the capital, where most of the flowers are still dead but cynicism is in full bloom. Nobody I can find has an optimistic view of the session’s end, although Gov. Sunny was in Las Vegas on Tuesday so I did not get a chance to ask him.

I marveled once again at the idealism of the students who, helped by union money and travel costs paid for by TV mogul Jim Rogers, traveled to the capital and camped out in tents adjacent to the Legislative Building. They live in the real world, with unreal expectations. Most of the Gang of 63, working just a few feet away, live in an unreal world and make decisions with real-world impact.

Which children should be leading us?

The volume inside this cocoon-like echo chamber always increases this time of the year as the whining drowns out almost everything else. The Democrats say the Republicans are closed-minded on more funding (i.e., taxes). The Republicans say the Democrats are not serious about reforms (i.e., education, public benefits).

And outside this pale imitation of a Beltway, people don’t care. They don’t care about the bickering and the posturing and the blathering. Too many, with too many good reasons, see lawmakers as children who can’t play well together in a sandbox — alas, the sandbox is a state trying to dig its way out of a depression and one that could be forever changed by the decisions made by sine die.

But they no longer sound like kids to me. The lawmakers and partisan special interests are starting to sound like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon, just a dull drone of static with no one tuned to the same frequency.

I have said many times — ad nauseam? — that the Democrats have woefully mismanaged the session, alienating Republicans whose votes they need and waiting too long to introduce their tax plan. But these Republicans who keep using the Democratic leadership’s maltreatment as an excuse not to consider restoring more funding are starting to sound like pouting teenage girls who didn’t get invited to the prom. (Cue the climax of “Pretty in Pink,” although I don’t see any Republicans in the Molly Ringwald role.)

Yes, private negotiations are ongoing, as my colleague David McGrath Schwartz has been reporting. But these seem to be motion-not-progress talks as the Democrats will never be able to do enough in reforms to appease critical Republicans and garner their votes for even lifting tax sunsets.

As I wrote Sunday, this cannot end well. But it could end especially badly, too, with a constitutional conflagration unlike any the state has seen and one that could immolate careers and institutions. It seems relatively likely at this point that lawmakers will not pass a budget by June 6. (My caveat here is that I think folks in the Assembly are more open to passing the Sandoval budget and letting him absorb what they think will be a backlash than in the Senate where the stay-all-summer-caucus is larger, or at least loudest in the voice of Majority Leader Steven Horsford.)

Perhaps it is the cynicism pollen in the air up here that causes me to turn up my nose at the prospect of a deal. Or maybe it is experience that makes me sneeze at the notion of compromise in a process that has become more hyperpartisan with every passing session, thanks mostly to a changing of the guard and the tools of social media.

If the governor sends lawmakers home June 7, he won’t call them back until the last week before the fiscal year ends. They will have time to stew and agitate, but Sandoval has the louder megaphone.

Then imagine: When they return, the governor will give them a very narrow berth, allowing them only a few days to pass a no-taxes budget. That could raise unresolved legal questions about how much authority the governor has (could he spend money without legislative approval, shut down only parts of government — how long are those DMV lines lately?), whether the Interim Finance Committee is constitutional (any lawmakers really want to test that one?) and whether the executive branch can determine how long a special session lasts (until June 30 or indefinitely?).

No one, I hope, wants this to end up at the state Supreme Court, including the justices. So as the session winds down to what surely will be a bitter end, even as summer approaches I think the weather inside the Legislative Building could get colder still.