Question 1: Important information and background on Henderson Library's tax-increase proposal
Voters in Henderson don't just have CCSD officials wanting to raise their property taxes in November. The Henderson Library District also wants more from taxpayers.
Henderson Libraries District Question No. 1 is a property-tax-increase proposal that would raise property taxes by 2 cents per $100 assessed valuation for 30 years with money going to the Henderson Library District.
The amount of misleading, incomplete and just plain false information being put out by supporters of this tax increase is staggering. I'll address some of the specific false statements supporters are making in an upcoming post.
Here is the crux of these eight points of context: In the last 20 years, the Henderson Library District has grown tremendously in terms of tax revenue, employees, salaries and materials.
Citations and links to source material are below.
1. Tax revenue received by the Henderson Library District has grown by 31 percent since 1997 after adjusting for inflation and population growth.
In 1997, Henderson Libraries received $19.04 in tax dollars per resident. In 2012, it received $24.96.
That's a 31 percent increase.
If the proposed tax increase had been in effect this year, the Library System's per-capita tax revenue would have been $31.44 - a staggering 65 percent increase since 1997.
In 1997, Henderson Libraries received $1,941,306 in tax dollars. In 2012, it received $6,671,331 from taxpayers.
To make it seem like the library is in financial trouble, tax-increase supporters have cherry-picked the year at the top of the housing bubble and made that the baseline - ignoring the years and years of growth that occurred before that.
The housing bubble was unsustainable and a temporary mirage. While the private sector has readjusted, the Henderson Library District wants to pretend the housing bubble was normal.
2. Library employees per capita have more than doubled since 2000.
In 2000, Henderson Libraries employed 32 FTEs (Full-time Equivalent Employees), which equaled .168 FTEs per thousand city residents.
In 2011, Henderson Libraries employed 86.5 FTEs, which equaled .312 FTEs per thousand city residents.
The number of library employees, even after adjusting for population growth, has nearly doubled.
3. Library employee salaries have jumped, even after adjusting for inflation.
In 2000, the average FTE earned $38,007 (salary and benefits), which adjusted for inflation is $49,647.
In 2011, the average FTE earned $56,041 (salary and benefits), which is a 12 percent increase after adjusting for inflation and after library employees reportedly took a 10 percent pay cut in 2010.
Eight employees earned over $90,000 in 2011, with Executive Director Thomas Fay taking home $146,388.
4. Library materials have nearly doubled per resident since 1999.
In 1999, there were 0.99 library materials per capita. In 2012, there are 1.96 library materials per capita.
5. This tax increase could and, if passed, I predict will be used to increase salaries and benefits.
When I interviewed Fay, he insisted that new money raised by the tax increase could not be used for pay increases, but admitted that money currently being used for books and services could be used to fund salary increases.
This is a textbook example of a shell game. If voters approved an additional $1.614 million for services and supplies, there's no legal prohibition on the Library District using the $1.606 million it spent this year on service and supplies to increase employee wages.
6. If the Library needs to close locations after an inflation-adjusted, per-capita funding increase of 31 percent, that's on Library leadership, not on taxpayers or voters.
And the Galleria Library branch, which is inside the Galleria Mall, receives only 80 visitors a day. Which is only one person every five minutes. And some of those are mall employees checking their email.
That location is a prime candidate to get shut down, regardless of whether the tax increase passes or not, because so few people are using it.
7. Henderson Libraries has already received a tax-rate increase. In 1997, its property-tax rate was $.0500 per $100 assessed valuation. Starting in 2000, the rate increased several times and is now $.0575 per $100 assessed valuation.
8. This is a 30-year ask. That means that this tax increase is about much more than "surviving" the housing downturn. As seen above, with an inflation-adjusted, per-capita increase in tax revenues of more than 30 percent in the last 15 years, the Library District is doing well.
If the District's leadership can't figure out how to run the system with a 30 percent increase in funding, perhaps the District needs new leadership, not more tax dollars.
***The above numbers and resulting calculations are from the Henderson Library District's FY 2006 CAFR, FY 2011 CAFR and Final Budget for FY 2012. Inflation calculations were done using the BLS inflation calculator.***
Read moreBig Bird and the Left's false dichotomy
Is Big Bird powerless without the state? This letter writer to the Las Vegas Sun thinks so.
During last week's presidential debate, Mitt Romney fired Big Bird. He said that Big Bird was dependent on government funds and thus part of the 47 percent - therefore he would be part of his budget cuts.Read the whole letter for a classic example of a government-dependent mindset.
Now Big Bird will be unemployed. He will have to get unemployment, but Romney also wants to cut that from his budget. ...
Because Romney fired Big Bird, he would be homeless, hungry and have no health insurance.
In the real world though, this is a bit out of touch given that Sesame Street made, er..., $211 million from toy and consumer product sales between 2003-2006.
The letter highlights what is a significant flaw in liberal rhetoric - the false dichotomy. Either you support government subsidizing/mandating something or you hate it and anyone who could possibly benefit from it.
Case in point: If you oppose mandating insurance companies provide cancer vaccines, you must hate women or cancer patients.
That, as these examples illustrate, is the most elementary of thinking.
- If you don't give your son a sports car for his 16th birthday, you must hate him.
- If you don't give me all your money so I can buy my wife jewelry, you must hate women.
- If you don't eat three pounds of vegetables and exercise every single day, you must be a fat slob.
When these false dichotomies occur, we need to turn them into, as President Obama would call it, teachable moments.
Subsidizing PBS and Sesame Street is wrong, because it's not the role of government to choose winners and losers in the economy or in TV shows.
And eliminating PBS' subsidy wouldn't lead to the firing of Big Bird, but a chance for a show already earning hundreds of millions to succeed or fail on its merits.
Is Pres. Obama Keynesian or...American?!?
Apparently, a few folks are upset at the notion that President Obama might be a Keynesian, insisting instead that such notions are absurd and that the president is, indeed...American?This video is both hilarious and alarming all at once. Enjoy:
JFK's 1950 commencement address at Notre Dame
Guest post by Jared Carl, NPRI's Development Director
Recently, I read a JFK biography in which the biographer pointed out that then-Congressman Kennedy was "a fiscal conservative who often felt out of sync with the demands of constituents eager for federal largesse."
As evidence for Kennedy's conservatism, the biographer cites a few short passages from a speech that JFK gave at Notre Dame in the early days of 1950.
After reading the three tantalizing passages, I set about to find the speech online, but quickly realized it wasn't available. But thanks to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, I received a hard copy, the searchable PDF of which is available here.
The timing of receiving the hard copy couldn't be better ahead of tonight's presidential debate. I'd like to quote a section of the speech at length, without commentary. I believe it speaks for itself, and I invite everyone to read the address in its entirety.
As the problems that face us have become more complex, as the function of government has become enlarged, there has been a corresponding assumption of authority by the State. It is obvious from the history of the past 20 years that whether we like it or not - whether we be Republicans or Democrats - the government will continue to play an increasingly large part in our lives.
The theme of today - the scarlet thread that runs throughout the thoughts and actions of people all over the world - is one of resignation of major problems into the all-absorbing hands of the great Leviathan - the State. This trend is not divisible - we in the United States suffer from it, if less intensely.
It is, therefore, vital that we become concerned with maintaining the authority of the people, of the individual, over the State.
The assurance must be given that "Every man shall be protected in doing what he believes - against the influence of authority and majorities, of custom and opinion".
Charles Beard, the historian, has pointed out that the American Revolution rested on three premises: that each individual is endowed by God with certain unalienable rights, that governments are instituted to protect these rights, and that when a government takes these rights away, the people must revolt. This is precisely the philosophy which you have been taught at Notre Dame. You have been taught that each individual has an immortal soul, composed of an intellect which can know truth and a will which is free. Because of this every Catholic must believe in the essential dignity of the human personality on which any democracy must rest. Believing this, Catholics can never adhere to any political theory which holds that the State is a separate, distinct organization to which allegiance must be paid rather than a representative institution which derives its powers from the consent of the governed.
In addition, a Catholic's dual allegiance to the Kingdom of God on the one hand prohibits unquestioning obedience on the other to the State as an organic unit.
We are faced on this cold Sunday afternoon with a world torn by devastation and struggle. We cling precariously to a cold peace, while all about we can hear the muffled drums of war. The battle is on all fronts. Even words like "freedom" and "democracy" have been encaptured and are enslaved by the enemy.
Even here in America we are face to face with possible domestic disaster. A cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand - growing unemployment - with the possibility ever present that it may foredoom a collapse - is of vital concern.
As Peter Drucker wrote recently in Harper's Magazine: "Prevention of depression and chronic unemployment has become an absolute necessity for any industrialized society".
The ever expanding power of the federal government, the absorption of many of the functions that states and cities once considered to be responsibilities of their own, must now be a source of concern to all those who believe as did the great patriot, Henry Grattan that: "Control over local affairs is the essence of liberty".
Parent trigger on the silver screen
Over the weekend, I went to see Won't Back Down, a new movie portraying the struggles of parents whose children have been zoned into failing schools by their local school district monopoly.If you haven't seen the film, go see it. Whether you're a true education reformer or a union/establishment apologist, this movie is definitely worth seeing. Perhaps most telling is this line from Ving Rhames: "It's possible to criticize and support teachers unions."
While the film itself is profound and powerful, what's most interesting is the public policy at the heart of its story: parent-trigger laws. (I recently wrote about the promise of parent-trigger laws over at npri.org.) After all, Won't Back Down is a fictional adaptation of a true story that occurred in Southern California after parents and lawmakers became frustrated with the tolerance for failure in their public school system and searched for some method of recourse.
Here's a short interview with the real-life mother who inspired the making of Won't Back Down:
Sheila Leslie admits she twice voted to double a 'disincentive to hiring'
Now she tells us.
"We are one of the few states left that has no corporate business tax," Leslie said. "We have a modified business tax which is a disincentive to hiring."Unfortunately for taxpayers and private-sector employees, as an assemblywoman and senator, Leslie voted twice to double the modified business tax, which is basically a payroll tax.
This means that Leslie voted twice to double a "disincentive to hiring." In the state with the nation's highest unemployment rate. In the state that was probably hit hardest by the housing bubble. In a state desperate for jobs.
Is the modified business tax the only reason Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country? Of course not, but it is a factor - one that's been admitted to by Sen. Steven Horsford, union bosses with the NSEA and AFL-CIO and now Leslie.
Unfortunately for taxpayers, Sen. Greg Brower, who is running against Leslie for state Senate, has already announced that he'll support Gov. Brian Sandoval's plan to extend the "sunset" taxes, including a doubling of the MBT for another two years. This is especially disappointing, because Brower stood with taxpayers and voted against the tax increases in 2011.
I don't know who's going to win the race between Brower and Leslie, but I know who's going to lose. Taxpayers, especially those who are unemployed.
NPRI: Every Nevada Supreme Court justice has a conflict of interest in upcoming case
If you care about our justice system, you should care about this issue. This is a very dangerous precedent for the future and a miscarriage of justice in the present.
NPRI: Every Nevada Supreme Court justice has a conflict of interest in upcoming case
LAS VEGAS - The Nevada Supreme Court on Oct. 2 will hold oral arguments in a case where it is both the judge and the defendant. The case, Wells Fargo Bank v. Renslow, is a challenge to the constitutionality of Nevada's Foreclosure Mediation Program, which was implemented by and is currently administered and run by the Nevada Supreme Court itself.
"Now," said Victor Joecks, communications director at the Nevada Policy Research Institute, "justices who administer the Foreclosure Mediation Program, who helped craft the original law, who implemented the program from scratch, who advertise the program on their website, who have frequently and publicly bragged about how many people the program has helped, and who collect the fees to run the program are preparing to rule on whether their pet program is even constitutional.
"These individuals are not impartial arbitrators of the key questions involved, including whether or not the constitution's separation-of-powers provision prohibited their administering of what is, by its nature, an executive-branch function," said Joecks.
"An impartial judiciary is a foundational principle of our judicial branch of government and every citizen has a right to an impartial judge," he continued. "Not only is it a dangerous precedent for the Supreme Court to disregard the need for an impartial judiciary, it's just plain wrong."
This isn't the first time Nevada's Supreme Court has faced controversy. In 2003, at the request of teacher-union attorneys and the Guinn administration, the court produced what has since become a case study in failed jurisprudence, its Guinn v. Legislature of State of Nevada opinion. The decision produced multiple critical law review articles nationally and inspired at least one Supreme Court staff attorney to resign after losing faith in the court's claim to impartiality.
Later, the court expressly reversed itself in a 2006 decision, declaring that "the Nevada Constitution should be read as a whole, so as to give effect to and harmonize each provision."
Joecks noted tha Nevada's Code of Judicial Conduct - approved by each current member of the Supreme Court - states, "An independent, fair and impartial judiciary is indispensable to our system of justice."
"The Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct also states that a judge 'shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned' or if the judge is 'a party to the proceeding or an officer, director, general partner, managing partner, or trustee of a party.'
"The Nevada Supreme Court's actions mock the very idea of an impartial judiciary, and reinforce the national perception that judicial decisions in the Silver State are an insider's game, indifferent to the law and transparently political," said Joecks.
For example, when he served as Chief Justice in 2010, Justice Ron D. Parraguirre wrote that "[t]he Judiciary's efforts in support of programs such as ... Foreclosure Mediation go beyond our core functions of hearing and determining causes and controversies. The courts, however, realize the value and benefit to our communities that these programs provide and are committed to contributing the hard work necessary to ensure continued success." (Emphasis added.)
"Every citizen - rich or poor, popular or not - has a right to expect that his or her case will be heard by an independent and impartial judge," Joecks added. "That is not happening in this case."
The Supreme Court's conflict of interest is so obvious that last year, Assemblyman Marcus Conklin said he expected the court's justices to uphold the FMP precisely because they are running the program.
Conklin stated, "It would be kind of odd [if the Supreme Court ruled the FMP unconstitutional], because the court administers the mediation program, and the court system retains all the fees. So sometimes you wonder what, you know, what level of bias there might be, you know, in that process, but I would suspect that they would uphold it."
In an earlier challenge to the constitutionality of the FMP, Second District Court Judge Patrick Flanagan reversed a ruling he had made - that the program was an administrative agency - in order to find the FMP constitutional.
Wells Fargo is challenging the FMP on multiple grounds, including the separation-of-powers question. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that "the requirement that one department cannot exercise the powers of the other two is fundamental in our system of government."
The Nevada Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Wells Fargo Bank v. Renslow on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012, at 10:00 a.m. on the 17th floor of the Las Vegas Regional Justice Center.
Read more:
- Case history of Wells Fargo Bank v. Renslow
- Every Nevada Supreme Court justice has a conflict of interest on the Foreclosure Mediation Program
- Second lawsuit challenges constitutionality of Foreclosure Mediation Program NV Supreme Court
- Chief Justice Nancy Saitta's 'Captain Louis Renault' moment
TEXPERS releases enemies list
Whatever happened to the notion of nonpartisan objectivity from official government offices?Are bureaucrats, while working on the taxpayers' clock, really supposed to target private citizens as "hostile threats?" That's a scary notion for any believer in individual liberty. And yet, that's exactly what's happened in Texas, where administrators of state and local government workers' defined-benefit pension system have lashed out against anyone who's publicly worried that taxpayers might soon struggle to keep up with mounting pension costs for government workers.
As is the case in Nevada and across the country, Texas' defined-benefit system is drastically underfunded and faces a growing unfunded liability. Because of this, taxpayers' annual required contributions to the pension system are increasing with each passing year. Some cities and and counties around the nation are seeing their annual retirement contributions rise to well over 20 percent of their annual budget, crowding out their ability to provide critical public services.
That's precisely why there's a growing recognition that defined-benefits pension plans for government workers should be converted into either 401(k)-style retirement accounts typical in the private sector or into some form of hybrid plan, as Utah has done. (NPRI has recommended a Utah-style hybrid for Nevada.) This change is intended to protect both taxpayers and government workers who would gain additional flexibility and greater assurance that their pension promises could be upheld. In particular, a Utah-style hybrid or defined-contribution plan would make public-sector employment more attractive for talented, young professionals.
And, yet, in face of these substantive, rational observations, some groups of ill-informed bureaucrats have reflexively attacked reformers in order to protect the status quo while ignoring the potential benefits to government workers of a defined-contribution or hybrid alternative.
This is the most brazen of such attacks to date and I certainly hope it's not a harbinger of things to come. To its credit, NV PERS has yet to resort to these tactics, but you can see from the presentation developed by TEXPERS below that bureaucrats in Texas are explicitly targeting private citizens and groups as "hostile threats."
TEXPERS presentation on "hostile threats"
Principles
Every week, NPRI President Andy Matthews writes a column for NPRI's week-in-review email. If you are not getting our emails, which contain our latest commentaries and news stories, you can sign up here to receive them. Just enter your email in the box on the top right.
For today's week-in-review email, Andy examines the Nevada Supreme Court and its involvement in the Foreclosure Mediation Program.
Principles
If your parents were anything like mine, they did their best to instill in you at an early age the importance of principles.
"Don't steal." "Respect your elders." "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Try as I might to find exceptions to these rules, my parents insisted I abide by them.
Consider the "don't steal" directive. Even if I had argued that the store would never miss just one candy bar or that I really wanted my friend's matchbox car, because he didn't take good care of his toys, it wouldn't have flown.
While there were plenty of "self-centered" reasons to act right - imagine the consequences of getting caught or if my friend started taking my cars - my parents were content to tell me just one: "It's wrong."
That's a lesson that's stayed with me as I began working in the policy world. Our governmental system is based on many essential principles, such as the rule of law, separation of powers, inalienable rights, federalism, etc...
Many times policy proposals promise something good - more jobs or free health care - but the policy would violate an essential principle of our governmental system. In almost all cases, these policies wouldn't deliver the promised results, but even if they did, the policies are destructive, because they would violate a principle our very system of government is based on.
I'm reminded of that this week, because every justice on the Nevada Supreme Court is poised to violate a foundational principle of our justice system - the need for an impartial judge to decide a case. This principle is so foundational that the Nevada Supreme Court-approved Code of Judicial Conduct begins, "An independent, fair and impartial judiciary is indispensable to our system of justice."
On Oct. 2, 2012, the Nevada Supreme is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Wells Fargo Bank vs. Renslow, which involves a constitutional challenge to Nevada's Foreclosure Mediation Program.
The seven justices of the Nevada Supreme Court, though, are not impartial arbitrators of the Foreclosure Mediation Program's constitutionality. That's because these justices administer the Foreclosure Mediation Program, helped craft the original law, implemented the program from scratch, advertise the program on their website, have frequently and publicly bragged about how many people the program has helped, and collect the fees to run the program.
Each justice on the Supreme Court has an obligation to recuse himself or herself or at the very least acknowledge this conflict of interest from the bench.
Of course, to do so would highlight a substantial Constitutional problem with the Foreclosure Mediation Program - that the Supreme Court is running, what is in everything but name, an administrative agency in violation of Nevada's separation-of-powers clause.
When he served as Chief Justice in 2010, Justice Ron D. Parraguirre, even wrote that "[t]he Judiciary's efforts in support of programs such as ... Foreclosure Mediation go beyond our core functions of hearing and determining causes and controversies."
Now there are lots of "self-centered" reasons I could give you to care about this - this could lead to a judge having a conflict of interest in a case you care about or that this will give each of us serious reason to doubt that our system of justice is just - but I don't think those reasons are as important as the one my parents taught me some years ago.
It's wrong. Period
Take care,
Andy Matthews
NPRI President
Remember, if you'd like to receive the latest from NPRI, sign-up for our emails here. Enter your email address in the box on the top right.
Rahm gets rolled
The Chicago Teachers Union may have decided to end its strike, but kids once again are the loser.For seven days, Chicago kids have not been able to go to class because the Chicago Teachers Union would rather pursue its own interests at the bargaining table than teach. Now, kids will return tomorrow to the same failing system that benefits adults more than it does children.
While some facets of the contract between Chicago Public Schools and the CTU are still being worked out, here is what we know:
Teacher evaluations: On Wednesday, Chicago students will walk into a classroom where mediocrity, if not outright failure, not only is acceptable - it is protected. Mayor Rahm Emanuel's willingness to back down from stricter teacher evaluation standards will continue to hurt students.
Merit pay: In taking merit pay off the table, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will allow Chicago to be a place where bad teachers are protected at the expense of excellent teachers. Fiscal reality: Over the next four years, CPS will act irresponsibly by handing out raises in excess of 16 percent. This is despite the fact that Chicago Public Schools already is draining its reserve funds and plans to operate $1 billion in the red next year even before added expenses. Where will the money come from? Taxpayers all across Illinois: Watch your wallets.
Parents are relieved that their students will return to school, and rightfully so. But it is important that we not consider the return to school a victory in itself. It should give us all serious pause that one of the most radicalized government unions in the country was just able to bring public education to a screeching standstill - at least until Mayor Emanuel put taxpayers on the hook for the union's demands.
CPS is a monopoly provider of educational services to the 350,000 kids who were locked out of the schools. Further, the CTU is the monopoly provider of teaching labor, and has been able to hold students hostage while they strong-arm the school system for less accountability and higher wages.
The Mayor and Karen Lewis put their political power interests ahead of the children's best interest. What could have been a shining moment of leadership has turned into a dull, numbing disappointment.
