Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Steve Sebelius

Cutting the fat?

Gov. Kenny Guinn says he's cut all the fat he can from the state budget, and that nothing but muscle and bone are left. He's frozen 1,500 positions. He's privatized the state industrial insurance system. He's ordered state agencies to begin using zero-based budgeting. And he's mandated a 3 percent across-the-board budget cut for all agencies except K-12 education.

Now, as the governor prepares to borrow $100 million from the so-called "rainy day fund" to balance the budget, he says there's nothing more to cut. But along comes a $1 million public relations contract, awarded -- as if to add insult to injury -- to a well-regarded but out-of-state agency.

The topics? Anti-drinking and driving, motorcycle safety, pedestrian and bicycle safety and child-passenger safety. If this doesn't qualify as fat in a budget that strains to provide textbooks to schoolchildren and is closing mental-health programs, we may as well close up shop right now.

Guinn's spokesman, Greg Bortolin, says the contract will have no impact on the state's finances. Most of the money comes from a federal grant, and the $50,000 in state funding that was originally part of the package was trimmed at the request of Secretary of State Dean Heller, a member of the Board of Examiners.

"The state didn't spend a dime. The state is using federal dollars," says Bortolin. "If these were state dollars, I can guarantee you with 100 percent certainty that this wouldn't have happened." Well thank God Nevadans don't pay federal taxes, or this might be money out of our pockets.

Oh, wait. We do.

Bortolin argues that the federal money would be spent in any case -- if not by Nevada, perhaps by one of her neighbors. And he notes -- correctly -- that Nevada sends more in tax dollars to Washington, D.C., than she gets back in terms of federal spending. Since the move costs the state nothing, he says, why not do it?

But the very system that encourages the spending of tax money hither and yon on programs of questionable value creates the problem in the first place. Tax money isn't considered a valuable resource to be directed only to the most needed programs; it's considered a prize to be seized by the most politically savvy senator, the most gifted grant-writer and the most shameless corporate welfare mom.

We end up paying taxes to support the programs that are needed, intermingled like weeds in a rose garden with many more that are not. That's why you have to have some sympathy for the business types in Nevada who argue for cutting state government spending before raising taxes, as Gov. Guinn now seems poised to do.

Those of us who favor a tax increase are hard-pressed to answer the charge that Guinn has not cut everything possible out of the expenditure side of the state's ledger. Not while the Henderson State College is still operating, or while public-relations programs nag us to buckle our seat belts.

Make no mistake: Cutting all this fat is not going to fill the gap that Gov. Guinn says exists in the state budget -- not even close. But every little bit -- quite literally -- adds up. "We're not trying to buy a Mercedes here, we're trying to buy an Impala," says Bortolin. "I guess we're being criticized for trying to buy leather when standard cloth seats will do."

But to extend the metaphor, why is the state car-shopping at all when it can hardly afford to buy food, rent and clothing, and has a perfectly serviceable old sedan in the garage? I hate to sound like a Republican, but don't those people always argue that when families are faced with rising costs and static income, they cut their budgets? And shouldn't the state do the same?

Don't get me wrong: The state could have a 100-percent fat free budget and some business leaders would still refuse to pay more in taxes to cover legitimate, growing needs. It's that knee-jerk, no-compromise attitude that frames the coming tax battle in Carson City, and the promise-breaking business community deserves to lose.

But businesses aren't asking for too much to have the state justify each and every expenditure against a list of core priorities around which the state's budget must be built: Education, Medicaid, transportation, public safety and social services. Everything else -- and that does mean everything -- should be eliminated. Not cut, not frozen, not put on hold. Eliminated forever.

Bortolin says that Gov. Guinn is open to further cuts in the state budget, and that the upcoming Legislature will discuss those options alongside proposals to raise taxes. But he'll forgive our skepticism, given that it was this very political process that produced white elephants like the Henderson State College in the first place.

Guinn will ask in his State of the State message in January what kind of Nevada its residents want. The kind of state that has good schools, a working transportation system and good quality of life, or one that's bereft of those things.

But the first question must be, "What can the state still do without?" And plenty of answers to that question still litter the state budget.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.