WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

Wednesday

Nevada not alone in the red

A ballooning budget deficit. A reeling economy. Caterwauling from the state's higher education system about "Draconian cuts." A Republican chief executive who insists that the state, like its citizens, must live within its means during difficult times.

Nevada Democrats like to think they have a monopoly on these narratives -- that declining tax collections, red ink and an uncompromising governor are unique to this state.

But these exact headlines are dominating the news from our neighbor the southeast. Arizona faces a $1.3 billion revenue shortfall for the fiscal year ending June 30. Next year, funding for the state's roughly $10 billion general fund is expected to come up between $2.7 billion and $3 billion short. ...

Arizona's Republican-controlled Legislature has little appetite for tax increases. Instead, they've proposed cutting university budgets by about 25 percent.

"We simply cannot work our way out of this situation by cutting, cutting, cutting," University of Arizona President Robert Shelton told the Arizona Daily Star.

Does all this sound familiar? ...

If you believe Nevada's legislative Democrats, such struggles are exclusive to Nevada because of an "unstable" tax system that must be "restructured."

Funny, but Arizona has the taxes Nevada's government groupies most adore. Arizona has a personal income tax. Arizona has a corporate income tax. It has a high state sales tax rate to go with property taxes. Arizona's tax structure has, as some are fond of saying, three legs on its stool.

Yet that hasn't saved Arizona from the fact that when the economy is in the tank, government tax collections don't continue growing. And, despite the rhetoric from Nevada Democrats about the need to overhaul this state's tax structure, it won't save the Silver State, either.

But once the Legislature is in session, facts tend to get in the way of tax-increasing agendas.