Here’s one flip-flop voters should forgive

Suddenly, Gov. No New Taxes has become Gov. OK To Taxes.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Gov. Brian Sandoval told the Review-Journal’s Ed Vogel on Tuesday that he’d sign a pair of bills that would allow the Clark County Commission to raise sales and gasoline taxes to pay for more cops and more roads.

That’s on top of the taxes he already agreed to raise, once more extending a package of “sunset” taxes that was supposed to expire in 2011, including sales, payroll, business license and car-registration taxes.

Not to mention new fees, such as those that will be charged to people seeking to get a new driver authorization card or — if the governor signs the bill — to apply to open a medical marijuana dispensary.

Is it a case of flip-flopping?

Perhaps a better question is, who cares?

Sandoval adopted his “no new taxes” stance in 2010, when he was running in a Republican primary against then-Gov. Jim Gibbons, who’d made the phrase locally famous. Gibbons was behind the constitutional amendment that requires the Legislature to muster a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, but the anti-tax philosophy never seemed to be a good fit with Sandoval.

But when your Republican primary foe is saying it, when even your Democratic general-election opponent (then-Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid) is saying it, why take chances? And if there’s one thing the cautious Sandoval doesn’t like to do, it’s take chances.

The trouble is, “no new taxes” is bumper-sticker wisdom, a near-religious article of faith that works better as a piece of rhetoric than it does in the real world. And when reality intrudes, ideology usually falls.

It did for Sandoval two years ago, when the Nevada Supreme Court decided “sweeping” (read: stealing) local government money and putting it into the state general fund was an unconstitutional local or special tax. Sandoval could have done what Gibbons surely would have: cut the budget further. That would have meant less money for schools, something Sandoval didn’t want.

It didn’t take the governor long to decide; he elected to continue the “sunset” package for two years. He added at least another two late last year when building the budget that was approved by lawmakers in the just-concluded session.

It also didn’t take him long to decide to approve the bills that would allow the Clark County Commission to raise the sales and gas taxes. Although his stance is somewhat attenuated — it won’t be the governor raising the tax, it will be county commissioners — the decision is still well-grounded. Clark County voters in 2004 approved the idea of raising the sales tax to hire more police, and we’ll get the chance in 2016 to decide on the ballot whether we want to keep our higher gasoline tax.

Even Gibbons allowed that a vote of the people could override a governor’s “no tax” stance.

And it’s not like the governor has become a tax-loving liberal. He looked skeptically at proposals to raise the payroll tax and reform the live-entertainment tax, which, in its original form, would have put new taxes on movies, miniature golf, bowling and going to the gym.

He wasn’t in favor of a Republican-generated idea to put a mining tax increase on the 2014 ballot, although that never made it to a hearing. And it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see Sandoval campaign against an initiative to impose a 2 percent margins tax on businesses. That question will be on the 2014 ballot.

But when it counts, when the people ask for it, or when common sense dictates it, Sandoval has shown a welcome ability to abandon a nifty phrase masquerading as an idea in favor of doing the right thing for the state. Conservatives may hate it, but the rest of us should applaud him for it.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@ reviewjournal.com.