Teachers-gaming deal substituting for policy

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

I’d be more outraged that Steve Wynn is making tax policy if someone who had been elected actually were making tax policy.

I’d be more outraged that a 3 percentage point increase in room taxes is being called tax policy if the state actually had a tax policy.

And I’d be more outraged about a teachers-gaming partnership on tax policy if I hadn’t already seen a movie about a teachers-gaming partnership on tax policy.

Indeed, what has occurred during the past few weeks, culminating Monday with the teachers withdrawing their petition to increase the gross gaming tax, has a disturbing familiarity. It’s familiar because the much-ballyhooed teachers-gaming partnership also resulted in the union pulling an initiative petition to tax business (again based on future promises of revenue) 18 years ago. It’s disturbing because Nevada was close to last in education funding in 1990 and has marinated in that lowly status through 2008 — and surely will through this latest incarnation of this beautiful friendship between specially interested parties.

Such a deal this is, folks. But for whom?

The teachers, who may or may not have collected the requisite signatures, agreed to abandon a petition that could have reaped as much as $400 million in two cycles for a problematic scheme that could net them as much as $150 million — or more in the long run with thousands of rooms theoretically coming online. That may seem as if it is a bird-in-the-hand calculation by the Nevada State Education Association, which makes sense, especially because organizers may not have qualified the petition under a multimedia assault by the gamers in rural and Northern Nevada.

But that bird may fly away if Murphy’s law kicks in — counties don’t put the proposed advisory question on the ballot or the backup statutory initiative in the deal doesn’t qualify. And now the pressure is off the gamers, who may or may not have been able to persuade the Supreme Court to remove the initiative. But they eradicated a potential 44 percent increase in the gaming tax and traded it for a small boost in a tax their customers pay.

This might seem like a sweet deal for Strip lords, but an argument could be made that if they had waited to see whether the teachers qualified the petition or for the Supreme Court to act in July, they might have made an even better deal — and actually looked magnanimous in doing so.

This marriage of convenience has a long way to go before it is consummated.

The industry should probably throw a party for Wynn for derailing the initiative. But with MGM Mirage and Boyd Gaming — two major players — not signing on because they don’t like how the money is slated to be disbursed, and with Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson opposed, how does this get approved?

Gov. Jim Gibbons is lukewarm at best. Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio has also been tepid, perhaps influenced by a sudden primary challenge from the feisty ex-Assemblywoman Sharron Angle. That’s two-thirds of the state government’s leadership not embracing the plan.

Did anyone notice that the role traditionally reserved for a governor — bringing captains of industry to the table — was carried out by Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, a nascent candidate for the office, while the incumbent was sniping at the deal from an undisclosed location in Iraq? Not quite as far away, the Just Say No crowd, aka the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce elite, was cavorting in Washington, D.C., having faux policy while the state languishes and they pat each other on the back for dodging any responsibility yet again.

The commonality between 1990 and 2008 is that external forces imposed a solution on the political system because state lawmakers, crippled by too much fear and too little creativity, created a vacuum with their pathetic paralysis. The large difference between then and now is that there was a governor (Bob Miller) who the special interests knew would rubber-stamp their solution because he believed in it, while this time there is a governor (Jim Gibbons) who is likely to oppose it (or not be helpful) because he believes in his political survival at all costs.

So maybe I would be more outraged if I hadn’t seen all of this before, with only the names changed (at least some of them) to protect the craven. Band-Aids where surgery is needed. Unelected hegemony while the politicians stand on the sidelines. The business community just says no and wins.

On second thought, I think I might be outraged. How about you?