How Nevada lawmakers have marginalized themselves and ceded power to influential special interest groups

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, April 20, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

In 2003 then-Gov. Kenny Guinn suggested lawmakers were either going to get with the tax program or be rendered irrelevant. He was wrong — I see no gross receipts tax enshrined in Nevada law.

But five years later Guinn looks like a prophet. Thanks to their appeasement of a governor who has a no-tax policy, which is no tax policy at all, and some potentially unstoppable initiatives, which are less policy than jihads, state lawmakers have become bystanders on the most important decisions facing Nevada.

Indeed, when the 2009 session convenes, I suggest that representatives of the state teachers union and Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson be seated instead of the Gang of 63 — and save a seat for Kermitt Waters, the rabble-rousing contrarian, if he gets his initiative act together. Oh, Gov. Jim Gibbons is welcome to attend, too, but he is superfluous: Adelson has him covered.

This endgame started to become clear last week as Adelson’s initiatives cleared a judicial hurdle and the gaming industry’s lobbying arm mobilized to try to defeat the teachers’ tax proposal in two arenas — rural Nevada, where the Nevada Resort Association has less influence, and the state Supreme Court, which the NRA has long considered its home court.

Lawmakers have long been marginal players in setting state policy. They tinker with the governor’s budget, but rarely change much. They meet for less than 17 percent of the time every two-year cycle. And because they have cowered on the sidelines for so long — although to be fair, too many of them did not even know how to find the playing field — they may be too late to get into the game. Indeed, the game’s final score may be preordained:

Gibbons is reelected as he holds the line on taxes and is seen as a firm cost cutter. Adelson, the Democrats’ bete noire, continues to transform the state’s oligarchy that has ruled from up and down the Strip to a more centralized headquarters on the faux Piazza San Marco. And the state’s tax policy becomes a hodgepodge of agenda-driven initiatives that cement into law a variety of levies that state lawmakers can’t touch.

Once again hearken back to 2003. Maybe then-Assemblyman Ron Knecht was right when he said we are becoming East California, albeit not for the high-tax reasons that exemplar of pomposity was lampooning.

Like our neighbor to the west, Nevada is in danger of falling victim to initiative mania, especially on taxing issues, encumbering the budget and giving legislators little reason to exist.

Both of Adelson’s initiatives to divert room taxes moved forward last week when a Carson City judge green-lighted them. Only the state Supreme Court stands in the way of those or the teachers’ 3 percentage-point increase in the gross gaming tax appearing on the ballot.

If they do, it will be very difficult to stop them from passing, although they must be approved twice, thanks to a restrictive constitutional provision. Thus, the unveiling last week by the gaming industry of an attempt to invade rural Nevada with a spinning army led by ex-Rep. Barbara Vucanovich and ex-Speaker Joe Dini, while strategically sound, had a whiff of something I have not often smelled from the state’s ruling class: desperation.

The industry surely believes the high court is its backstop on July 1, when the justices — who rarely rule against their main campaign contributors — are scheduled to hear the final appeal against the teachers’ proposal. But, ironically, because these justices run for office, they may not want to face a public backlash if they disallow voters from venting their spleens against the gamers by raising their taxes.

So, just in case, the industry is running a campaign in rural Nevada to squelch the teachers’ signature-gathering efforts by scaring voters into thinking that big, bad Clark County teachers union bosses want to steal their tax money for themselves. It’s sort of true, but it’s a little difficult to take seriously the love for rural Nevada now being expressed by the big, bad Clark County gamers.

But, folks, this is what it has come to, the natural conclusion of decades of inattention by state lawmakers to the structural deficit in the state’s tax system — it could be reconfigured by one gaming titan and one special interest. Lawmakers will have no say, and their silence about these initiatives speaks to their relevance.

And for all of you other groups out there sitting back and smiling that your bottom lines are not being assaulted by these initiatives, don’t get comfortable: This is only the beginning.