Good sign: Superintendent Jones demands honesty on graduation rates
What's the first step toward recovery for an individual in Alcoholics Anonymous? Admitting you have a problem.
What's an encouraging first step for the Clark County School District? Admitting that it has a huge graduation problem - and, by implication, huge problems throughout the entire system.
When Dwight Jones was hired last November to be superintendent of the Clark County School District, he promised honesty and transparency to win over a distrustful and suspicious community.A graduation rate of 44.3 percent or 51 percent is a huge problem. But admitting that your graduation rate is substantially lower than the lie your predecessor told the public is great news. Great news.
Now, School District officials are acknowledging what critics have long suspected - that high school graduation figures have for years been inflated to paint a better picture than actually existed.
"We've known for a long time the community has been challenging some of the data that the district was coming out with," said Pedro Martinez, Jones' recently hired deputy superintendent of instruction.
"We need to have the trust of the community, the parents and all of the district's employees," he said. "The reality is when the data are not clear, then frankly people mistrust it. The new superintendent came in and said we're going to find out the real numbers. Whatever the truth is that's what we're going to put out there."
The issue became pointed this week when Education Week magazine reported that Clark County's public school graduation rate was 44.3 percent in 2008, not the 68 percent figure that had been reported under Jones' predecessor, Walt Rulffes. That's a difference of 24 percentage points. ...
Jones and Martinez have adopted a new formula to determine the district's high school graduation rate. The formula is expected to lower this past year's previously reported rate from 68 percent to 51 percent, a number they say reflects reality.
You can't fix a problem you won't publicly admit you have. Between this show of honesty and his awesome-sounding growth-model plan, I'm cautiously optimistic that Superintendent Dwight Jones is serious about pushing substantial reforms, in contrast to the highly lauded but ultimately window-dressing education reforms we got out of the legislative session.
Jones' biggest obstacle to improving Clark County schools is going to be the Clark County Education Association, which, because of the Legislature's inaction, still has substantial power to hinder Jones' implementation of needed reforms.
Let us hope that by showing the community the depth of the problem CCSD has graduating any student - white, black, Latino, male or female - the public will stand up to the CCEA and support Jones as he implements changes to increase student achievement.
Read moreTeacher earning $58,000 a year, including benefits, claims he'd starve without a second job
This Las Vegas Sun story, of course, never mentions how much he makes, but check out the sympathy it gives to the teacher.
By day, Daniel Avellino teaches math and reading to 20 students in his second-grade class at Roberts Elementary School in Henderson.The article notes that Avellino has $50,000 in student-loan debt and over $10,000 in credit-card debt.
By night, the 31-year-old is an actor at the Las Vegas Mob Experience, playing the role of a casino security guard who "beats up" alleged card cheaters in front of hundreds of tourists.
Avellino is one of a number of Clark County School District teachers who have taken up second jobs to make ends meet as the district tries to figure out how to plug a projected $150 million budget deficit next year.
"Last year, pay freeze. This year, a cut in pay. I don't want to stick around to see what happens next year," he said as the nine-month school year winds to an end today.
"Any disposable income I may have had has completely evaporated, and now they want to cut my pay," he said.Read the full article to get a full sense of just how sympathetic reporter Paul Takahashi makes Avellino's situation out to be with a not-so-subtle undertone of "it's outrageous anyone would cut this hardworking teacher's pay." The logical takeaway from that is "we need higher taxes."
The gig brings in about $1,000 to $1,500 each month - enough to give Avellino "some breathing room," he said.
"Without this job, I'd be starving," he said. ...
"It's heartbreaking. I feel like I'm being forced out of this position, but you can only take so much. You have to say enough is enough." [Emphasis added]
So how much does Avellino make as a "starving" teacher? $20,000, $25,000 a year?
Nope. Over $58,000 a year (plus summers off) - $42,695 in salary, $9,179 in PERS contributions and a health-insurance plan currently worth $6,620.
Readers of the Sun story, though, don't find out that Avellino makes the equivalent of $48.62 an hour. And that's a shame, too, because that one simple fact - readily available on TransparentNevada and easily deduced from CCSD's own teacher salary schedule website - would change the entire tone of the story.
If you're earning $58,000 a year and can't afford to eat, you've got a debt and spending problem. You need Dave Ramsey, not a pay increase.
Although, if that's how Avellino wants to spend his money - fine. And if he wants to get a second (and third) job to pay for it, good for him.
But don't complain to the public - with the not-so-subtle implication being that taxpayers need to pony up more money - that you'd starve without a second job when you're making over $58,000 a year.
At a time when Nevada's unemployment rate is 11.9 percent and its actual jobless rate is near 24 percent, complaining about making $58,000 a year (with summers off) shows how out of touch some government employees are.
Texas billionaire pretty upset Nevada didn't give him $1.4 billion
It looks like Texas developer Chris Milam is taking his ball(parks) and going home.
The deal to buy land west of Interstate 15 for a three-stadium sports complex has collapsed, ending a Texas developer's plans for the $1.95 billion project across from Mandalay Bay. ...Aside from the numerous, numerous studies showing that government-subsidized stadiums are a horrible waste of taxpayer dollars, giving a private developer $1.4 billion for a private stadium would have been crony capitalism at its worst.
"The discussions ended. It's not happening," [John] Knott [executive vice president of the CB Richard Ellis Global Gaming Group] said, blaming the collapse on the Nevada Legislature's failure to approve a bill that would have allowed Clark County to create a special taxing district for one of three alternate and competing Las Vegas stadium projects.
Fortunately for taxpayers, Assembly Taxation Chair Marilyn Kirkpatrick and other members of the Taxation Committee were skeptical and effectively killed the enabling legislation that would have allowed Milam and other arena developers to gain taxpayer dollars from the Clark County Commission.
The whole issue of government-subsidized stadiums is a perfect example of what the political philosopher Frederick Bastiat, writing in The Law, called legalized plunder. Bastiat defines plunder as follows: "When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it - without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud - to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed."
In the following passage, Bastiat does a great job defining legalized plunder, its dangers and what to do about it. Although Bastiat wrote this in 1850, notice how relevant his points are to our current political debates.
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks.For anyone interested in understanding the philosophical foundation of limited government, individual liberty and free enterprise, I cannot urge you strongly enough to read The Law. It's well-written, brilliant, short and available for free online.
This legal plunder may be only an isolated stain among the legislative measures of the people. If so, it is best to wipe it out with a minimum of speeches and denunciations - and in spite of the uproar of the vested interests.
How to Identify Legal Plunder
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law - which may be an isolated case - is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it. [Emphasis added]
After reading it, you will understand why both giving subsidies to businesses and wealth-redistribution programs are anathema to liberty.
If Milam wants to build stadiums in Las Vegas with his own money, good for him. Until then, Milam should take his quest for legalized plunder elsewhere.
AB376 will show if Sandoval is serious about his no-new-tax promise; Updated
After Gov. Brian Sandoval broke his no-new-tax pledge and brokered a deal to raise taxes by $620 million in the next two years, it's logical to wonder how fiscally conservative the governor is.
AB376 will give Nevadans an insight into the question. AB376, passed literally during the last minutes of the session, would allow the owners of the Reno Aces to charge additional taxes for their own benefit and add a $2 room tax to downtown hotels.
Proposals that will allow the Reno Aces to add a surcharge for parking, concessions and tickets passed in the last 2 minutes of the session that ended on its scheduled deadline of 1 a.m. Tuesday.This bill has many of the same problems as SB501, which would have allowed Clark County to use tax dollars to subsidize a sports arena. I've previously described the problems with government-subsidized sports pork here.
Also passing at the wire was a plan to charge a $2 room tax at downtown resorts to fund the renovation of the downtown National Bowl Stadium, Reno Events Center, Ballroom and Livestock Events Center. ...
The proposal to refurbish the bowling stadium is tied to critical tourism negotiations, city leaders said. At stake may be a 20-year commitment from the United States Bowling Congress to come to Reno each year for annual tournaments.
The question is now this: "What will Gov. Sandoval do?"
AB376 clearly contains a tax increase. Here's some of the language from the bill.
An ordinance enacted pursuant to subsection 1 must impose a surcharge of $2 on the per night charge for the rental of a room in a hotel in the district that holds a nonrestricted gaming license.Sandoval has previously opposed new taxes, with one glaring exception.
Is that exception a true exception or will that exception become the rule? Watching what Sandoval does with AB376 will give taxpayers a clear answer.
Update: I should clarify that AB376 is not a direct tax increase. It would enable the city of Reno, in the case of the Aces' tax increase, and the Washoe County commissioners, in the case of the hotel room tax increase, to raise taxes after a two-thirds vote of the respective local government bodies. (H/T to Ray Hagar for pointing this out to me directly.)
The point still stands, however - if Sandoval is serious about no new taxes as a policy (whether he prevents taxes from being raised directly or prevents enabling elected officials in Reno and Washoe County to raise them), he will veto this bill.
Other problems with the bill include the fact that giving tax dollars away to private business owners is neither the role of government nor an effective economic policy.
Irony: Sen. Kieckhefer votes for tax increases, because he 'made a commitment'
Today, the Nevada Senate passed a $620 million tax increase. Freshman Sen. Ben Kieckhefer was one of four Senate Republicans to vote for the tax increase.
What's ironic here is a statement Kieckhefer made to Ray Hagar of the Reno Gazette-Journal. Hagar asked Kieckhefer if, after receiving numerous e-mails opposing his decision to raise taxes, the senator would reject tax increases.
The first-year senator from south Reno, who knocked off the sign-kickin' Ty Cobb in the GOP primary, says he remains a solid vote for the budget deal.While sticking to your commitments is an admirable quality, it's one Kieckhefer applies selectively. He did not keep the commitment he made to his constituents in 2010 - that he wouldn't vote for the sunset taxes - and he broke his word to them today.
"I made a commitment. I don't plan on breaking it." [Emphasis added]
Kieckhefer isn't the only Republican to break his word - Sen. Dean Rhoads, Sen. Joe Hardy, Sen. Mike McGinness and Gov. Brian Sandoval also fit that description.
NPRI statement on SB501: Government subsidized stadiums are economically harmful pork projects
NPRI spokesman: Government-funded stadiums are government pork at its worst
LAS VEGAS - In testimony submitted to the Assembly Taxation Committee on Senate Bill 501, which would allow Clark County to approve one of multiple proposals for a taxpayer-funded stadium, Victor Joecks, the communications director at the Nevada Policy Research Institute, offered the following remarks today:
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Victor Joecks and I'm the Communications Director with the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 501.
I'd like to make three observations today.
First, despite what the developers may claim, these proposals are not an example of entrepreneurship or the free market. If these were free-market proposals, the developers would be risking their own money. (And if they were investing their own money, we'd be applauding them.) Instead, they wish to risk government tax dollars to build a business venture designed primarily to benefit them. At its core, this is crony capitalism. Government's role is not to subsidize businesses - big or small - and these proposals are clearly subsidizes. Government's role is to establish a uniformly low tax and regulatory burden and let individuals in the marketplace - not elected officials in Carson City or Clark County - choose the winners and losers.
Second, although this proposal may not require a direct tax increase (although one option does include a fee for parking spaces), tax-increment financing systematically channels tax dollars away from the legitimate functions of government, including K-12 education, public safety and roads, among other things, and into the hands of private business owners. This means non-subsidized businesses must bear a heavier tax burden.
Third, economists (at least those not directly employed by those seeking these subsidizes) have consistently found that taxpayer-financed stadiums do not provide the promised economic benefits. And I'd like to note that most of these stadiums and arenas had a major-league franchise from one of the four major sports, which no proposal under consideration today can guarantee.
Here is a sampling of what economists have said about government-financed sports stadiums:
The Budget Office of the City of New York: Research consistently finds that new stadiums do not produce economic growth in metropolitan areas. These results imply that stadiums do not lead to increases in tourism, nor do they serve as a significant attraction to non-retail establishments. To the extent that stadiums benefit the businesses near them, the benefits reflect the expenditures of metropolitan area residents.
National Taxpayers Union: Publicly funded stadiums are, at best, an inefficient investment of taxpayer dollars for the meager benefits produced and, at worst, massive payments to rich team owners and players at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.
I'd also like to note that this bill would require the contractors to pay prevailing-wage rates, which would artificially increase the burden on taxpayers.
Neil deMause, who studied the issue for 12 years, during which time $10 billion of taxpayer money was spent on 50 stadiums, co-authored "Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit."
He told a congressional oversight committee, "I have yet to find any independent economists - that is, ones not on the payroll of pro sports teams - who believe there is any significant positive impact to local economies from sports stadiums and arenas."
Raymond Keating of the CATO Institute: "The economic facts, however, do not support the position that professional sports teams should receive taxpayer subsidies. The lone beneficiaries of sports subsidies are team owners and players. The existence of what economists call the "substitution effect" (in terms of the stadium game, leisure dollars will be spent one way or another whether a stadium exists or not), the dubiousness of the Keynesian multiplier, the offsetting impact of a negative multiplier, the inefficiency of government, and the negatives of higher taxes all argue against government sports subsidies. Indeed, the results of studies on changes in the economy resulting from the presence of stadiums, arenas, and sports teams show no positive economic impact from professional sports - or a possible negative effect."
Here is what Brookings Institution Economist Robert Baade found after comparing projected returns from new sports stadium construction, "which frequently are estimated by stadium boosters, with the more objective estimates of returns from stadiums that were actually built reported in studies by economists. He finds substantial divergence, with the former generally predicting positive returns and the latter finding little or no impact."
Also, researchers have consistently noted that the jobs created by stadiums are generally low-paying jobs that require minimal skills.
I've also compiled a list of just a few of numerous other economists and researchers who point out the problems with taxpayer-funded stadiums. I've submitted this research to your staff.
Thank you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Additional findings:
- Economists and researchers note the problems with government-funded stadiums, http://www.npri.org/docLib/20110603_Additional_findings_on_government_funded_stadiums.pdf
Why do PBS and KNPR receive public funding?
That's the question raised yesterday by Cato's David Boaz, who calls PBS "a public menace." He raises some great points about the television station's questionable obsolescence:
What, in a world of hundreds of radio and TV channels, is so special about PBS and NPR that they should get $420 million a year of taxpayers' money?
When I was a boy growing up in western Kentucky, with three TV networks, it was understandable that people thought an "educational" network would add something important. But my brother's kids in that same little town later had access to hundreds of cable stations.
PBS used to ask, "If not PBS, then who?" The answer now is: HBO, Bravo, Discovery, History, History International, Science, Planet Green, Sundance, Military, C-SPAN 1/2/3 and many more.
Further, Boaz highlights that KNPR listeners are statistically much more affluent than the average American and asks why working- and middle-class taxpayers should be forced to subsidize the news and entertainment preferences of the rich. Good question - but subsidies for KNPR are but one of many regressive wealth transfers effected by federal and state governments. Others include: the Fed's inflationary policies that transfer real wealth holdings from American households to wealthy Wall Street bankers and the US Treasury, farm subsidies, subsidized universities, renewable energy subsidies and a plethora of other government programs designed to plunder the working and middle classes for the benefit of special interests.
Video: Sen. Kieckhefer promises not to vote to renew 'sunset' taxes
This video clip is from the April 20, 2010 edition of "Nevada Newsmakers," which featured a debate among the Republican candidates for Senate District 4.
In the video, then-candidate Ben Kieckhefer says he's against higher taxes and explicitly states he will not vote for renewing the "sunset" taxes.
After Gov. Brian Sandoval broke his no-new-tax promise by agreeing to renew the "sunset" taxes, some political pundits have reported that Sen. Kieckhefer will vote for the higher taxes and the budget deal.
I don't know how Sen. Keickhefer will vote.
What I do know is that in 2010, he promised his constituents that he would not vote to renew the sunset taxes.
Will he keep or break his word? We'll know in just a few days.
Bonus: Here's a Kieckhefer campaign advertisement. That first bullet point reads "Lower taxes, less spending."
Sandoval vetoes bill dumbing down high school graduation standards
The bill is AB456 and, as I wrote last week, it would have allowed students to graduate while failing a portion of the high school exit exam.
Today, Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the bill with the following comments.
"Although this bill may allow more students to graduate from high school, it represents diminished expectations for our students and lower standards for obtaining a high school diploma in Nevada," said Sandoval in his veto message.The bill would need a two-thirds vote to overturn Sandoval's veto, which it didn't have in the Senate when it passed the first time.
"In my State of the State address, I said that our education system emphasizes too many of the wrong things. AB456 is another example of this paradigm and would send the wrong message to our students."
With only minor education reforms passing this session, Nevada didn't need to water down its standards any more.
Presidential candidates on Medicare reform
Cato's Michael Tanner, who recently headlined a series of NPRI Policy Luncheons, has an excellent review of the presidential hopefuls' stances (or lack thereof) on Medicare reform.
Specifically, he reviews each hopeful's reaction to Paul Ryan's plan for entitlement restructuring that would at least give a faint hope of long-term solvency to the federal government. It's definitely worth a read.
