Eve of destruction

Monday, April 28, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

For six months now the biggest news out of Carson City has been the need to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the state budget, a result of Nevada’s plunging economy.

Two rounds of cuts have sliced about as deep as they can go without forcing layoffs and severe disruptions in education, social services and public safety.

Now an uneasy lull pervades the Nevada capital. Will even deeper cuts be needed? Or will the economy come to life and send tax revenues back to more normal levels?

“We’re banking very, very heavily that the economy comes raging back,” state Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, told the Las Vegas Sun’s David McGrath Schwartz.

But Schwartz, in his Friday story, reported the fears of other state officials that the worst is yet to come. A third round of cuts this year could happen, and the situation the Legislature will confront after its session begins Feb. 2 could be brutal.

Andrew Clinger, Gov. Jim Gibbons’ budget director, told Schwartz that if projections hold true the 2009 Legislature will be confronting, at a minimum, an $800 million deficit for the period beginning July 1 and ending June 30, 2011.

Unfortunately, evidence so far shows the projections will indeed hold true. The Associated Press last week cited a national poll that asked people about their spending. Sixty percent said they are less comfortable now than they were six months ago about buying expensive items that states depend on for healthy tax revenues.

As for the stimulus checks the federal government will put in the mail beginning today, they might not be the economic boost once thought. “The sad truth is that the average American family will spend almost their entire stimulus check on higher gas prices this year,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week.

Because Gibbons has vowed to not raise taxes, no matter what happens, it appears Nevada will not much longer escape the kinds of budget cuts that will destroy long-standing programs.