Budget
Coming out of the dark
Government transparency would add credibility to both sides of the budget battle.
There's nothing particularly new, or even all that interesting, about the kafuffle taking place over Nevada's public K-12 education budget.
Still gross
The Gross Receipts Tax remains a horrible idea.
The Nevada special interests that regularly plump for a "broad based business tax" always couch their advocacy in the language of good public policy.
It's interesting, therefore, that the particular tax they’ve worked hardest for - a statewide gross receipts tax - is actually one of the worst public policy choices conceivable, according to non-partisan public finance experts.
Repeat offenders
Genuine reform is needed to end corruption at UMC.
The feeling of being in a time loop is something Southern Nevadans are becoming familiar with. They experience it anew every time the latest management debacle at the University Medical Center pops up in the news.
Nevada tax myths
Misconceptions allow our politicians to dodge accountability for bad public policy.
You’d never know it from the incessant calls for new taxes on Nevadans, but Silver State residents already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation.
The confused gaming-tax debate
We can find new revenues without creating any new taxes.
Just four short years ago, the Guinn Administration proposed and implemented the “mother of all tax increases” in Nevada. At that time, Gov. Guinn said, in reference to his $1 billion-plus plan to increase taxes, “This will not just be a plan for the next two years. This is a plan for the future.”
There they go again
The latest budget battle is a strange but familiar episode.
How peculiar, in the eyes of any financially responsible citizen, must be this drama now playing out in Carson City. It began when Gov. Jim Gibbons, responding to lower-than-projected revenues over the first couple months of the fiscal year, called on government departments in his charge to prepare contingency budgets at a level 5 percent below what they’d initially planned for.
Karma's gonna get ya
Despite the temptations, a higher gaming tax would be bad public policy.
In almost every legislative session for 20 years, the Nevada Resort Association has tried to get taxes raised on other Silver State industries.
A dose of reality
Proponents of endless education funding have learned some hard lessons.
In a mad rush to jack up education spending by over a billion dollars during the 2007 Legislative Session — without any serious and badly needed education reforms involving choice or accountability — Nevada’s education establishment tripped over the rock of reality and stumbled headlong into a pronounced credibility gap.
No room to complain
Opponents of Gibbons' highway funding plan overstate the LVCVA's worth.
The same folks who have been pounding the table demanding Gov. Jim Gibbons fix the highway funding problem in (especially southern) Nevada are now calling his funding plan “dead on arrival,” “not based upon sound policy” and “phony.”
Hard lessons learned in budget process
The governor's proposed budget reveals the need for spending limits.
It turns out that being fiscally responsible, in an age when runaway government expansion is in vogue, is much easier said than done.
Just ask Jim Gibbons.
