Sunday, July 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz

The fix was in

I had lunch with a retired Nevada judge back on July 1. He told me the reason Kenny Guinn and Richard Perkins and that double-dipping professor Dina Titus and the rest of the big-spending gang had been so intransigent -- not even willing to accept the $760 million tax hike Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick foolishly offered as a compromise, just a hair shy of the $860 million they were seeking -- was: "The fix is in. Guinn went to (Justice Bob) Rose and (Justice Miriam) Shearing on the Supreme Court some time ago and got their agreement that they'll impose the tax hikes. (Justice Deborah) Agosti is wavering, but it'll probably be 6-to-1."

This seemed a tad paranoid to me then. Now we know. The judge called it right. Hey! The big guy hits the canvas in the fourth, and nobody can spot where the punch landed!

The fig leaf the court chose was to declare the two-thirds majority requirement for a tax hike -- imposed by voters by 78 and 71 percent supermajorities in two successive elections in the 1990s -- can be freely ignored because it conflicts with the constitutional mandate to fund schools.

What is that mandate, exactly? Did anyone on the court actually bother to read it? As amended by the voters during the depths of the Great Depression in 1938, Article 11, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution states: "The legislature shall provide for a uniform system of common schools, by which a school shall be established and maintained in each school district at least six months of every year ... and the legislature may pass such laws as will tend to secure a general attendance of the children in each school district upon said public schools."

Do you see the now ritually recurring phrase "adequately funded" anywhere in there? Does it say anywhere in there that Carlos Garcia must be given a billion dollars for the Clark County School District, simply because he asks for it?

Jim Richardson, legislative lobbyist and bagman for the Nevada Faculty Alliance, wrote in a July 15 op-ed for the Review-Journal that this provision stipulates "that the common schools and university be supported." Is there a single word in there about any university? I even called the Legislative Counsel Bureau in Carson City to make sure the word "university" hadn't been slipped in, sometime after 1938. It had not. Perhaps Mr. Richardson has been getting his constitutional citations from Miss Cleo's Mind and Spirit Psychic Network.

There was $800 million left unallocated out of expected 2004-2005 state revenues as of July 10, if no new taxes were created whatsoever. Since Garcia now runs 227 failing schools in Clark County, could Nevada's school superintendents manage to maintain the required one school apiece for six months of the year on $800 million, instead of the $1.6 billion Gov. Guinn and Assembly Speaker Perkins and Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio and Ms. Titus wish to give them?

Heck, after laying off about 100 overpaid drones in "professional and curriculum development," Mr. Garcia could continue to maintain all the failing "elementary" and "middle" socialist youth propaganda camps currently in operation, merely shutting down half the high schools, thereupon preventing any subsequent potential overcrowding by the simple expedient of making attendance at their remaining high schools contingent upon passing a competitive eighth-grade examination.

Nothing in the constitution bans a high school entrance exam. Up through 1950, the majority of Americans got along just fine with an eighth grade education, and no one perceived any "crisis." In fact, that far more competitive, demanding and productive system made us the wealthiest and freest nation on earth!

The plaintiff Guinn hadn't even exhausted his options under the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative. He could have reopened the spending bills, allowing non-school spending to be trimmed till it reflected the 11 percent growth in state revenues now expected to pour in without a single new tax. Or, a simple majority of both houses could have put their $860 million tax hike on the ballot and let the voters decide. (Yes, that's also allowed by the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative.)

Instead, our "high court" -- which stands to enjoy a 29 percent budget increase when the tax hikes pass -- dismissed the two-thirds tax hike requirement as a mere "procedural rule."

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh replied: "If the court is willing to nullify 'general procedural rules' so that it can order the legislature to fund education, why stop at the two-thirds supermajority? What if it turns out that the Legislature can't even get a simple majority for a tax increase? Under the court's reasoning, it should nullify the 50-percent-plus-1 requirement, too -- after all, the simple majority requirement is also a mere 'procedural requirement that is general in nature.' "

And so the thin veneer that had still duped many of us into believing we had a government of law, and that our political leaders were not bought-and-paid-for shills of the gaming industry and the big government unions, has now been stripped aside, leaving them to writhe like yellow worms beneath an overturned rock, exposed for all to see.

What shall we do?

I, for one, would immediately sign petitions, and subsequently vote for, 14 specific and now utterly necessary voter initiative referenda, which I will begin to list next week.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."