In Business Las Vegas

Jon Ralston on Politics

Facts, not blather

By Jon Ralston / Staff Writer

If you are in business in Nevada, if you are married to someone in business in Nevada or, frankly, if you live in Nevada, go to www.nv2020.com.

You may not agree with what you find. You may disagree with the approach of the site. And you may think a 48-page PowerPoint on the state's financial structure is soporific.

But wade through it for one reason: It is as concise and compelling an exposition of the state's fiscal woes as you will find anywhere.

The site is the brainchild of Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, who is using the presentation there as the jumping-off point for a series of town halls for a discussion of the state's finances. She convened the first one this week at Spring Valley High School, plans one next week in Reno and hopes to have similar events in rural Nevada.

The title of the presentation is: "Overhauling Nevada's Financial Structure." Unless you don't have kids in school or don't drive on valley roads or don't have to use the health care system or are in a leadership position with the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, you know something needs to be done.

In her presentation, Buckley neatly encapsulates the perfect storm that is buffeting Nevada's economy, with the general fund coffers drying up because of the downturn and the way the state raises money leading to "boom and bust" cycles. She also points out what the ideologues at the chamber and their publicists at the Las Vegas Review-Journal fail to mention in their diatribes against bureaucrats and insistence that "government operate more like a business." To wit:

The Tax Foundation has found that Nevada has the lowest state and local tax burden in the country, save Alaska.

Nevada is dead last - even lower than Washington, D.C. - in the number of local and state government employees per 1,000 residents.

Nevada was ranked only 19th by Forbes this year among the states as being business-friendly, mostly because we were rated 47th in quality-of-life issues such as schools, crime and cost of living. A CNBC study found similar results.

This is the dirty little secret that the closed-minded crowd wants to ignore: Nevada is the fastest-growing state in the country but does not have as many government employees to provide services as we should and does not heavily tax the citizenry. These are facts, not the hyperventilating blather we get from those who just want to say no to anything that would pilfer their free lunch.

Buckley also points out in her presentation another oft-forgotten fact, which is that the state Constitution mandates certain levels of spending for higher and lower education, health care and prisons. Those budgets must be increased to meet the costs of more students, more recipients, more prisoners - and five years ago, when the chamber and a handful of Republicans were fighting against that $833 million tax increase, they forgot to tell you that 80 percent of it was to meet those so-called roll-up costs. But it's easier to say, "We should cut government," without providing a list of cuts, or simply to declare: "No new taxes."

That's what Buckley's town halls are really about - although there are those who will see them only as self-promotional or with the tendentious goal of raising taxes. But what she is trying to accomplish here is to simply lay out the facts and let people draw their own conclusions.

The rest of the PowerPoint shows where Nevada ranks in various categories of government services, from education to welfare to public safety. And she clinically delineates the impact of what will happen under the double-digit percentage budget cuts Gov. Jim Gibbons has in mind for Session '09. And she ends with various sides on how to change the status quo - from meaningful accountability measures to a different kind of rainy day fund to more aggressive tax collections.

Buckley is at least giving the impression she plans to listen to other perspectives, too, that she has not made up her mind about anything except that something needs to be done. She is at least claiming to have an open mind.

If everyone else, including the chamber set and some Republicans, takes the time to click on www.nv2020.com, they can make the same assertion.

In Business commentator Jon Ralston also hosts the news discussion program "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" on Las Vegas ONE, publishes the daily e-mail newsletter "RalstonFlash.com" and writes columns and a political notebook for the Las Vegas Sun. To subscribe to Flash, go to www.RalstonFlash.com, or call 990-2550. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

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