Court ruling saved integrity of future public bond requests

Bond questions where voters agree to raise their property taxes to build more schools or hire more police or improve transportation would have faced a rougher road if state officials had been allowed to simply swoop in, seize the money and use it any way they wanted.

Fortunately, the Nevada Supreme Court’s May 26 opinion concerning funding for Clark County’s Clean Water Coalition blocked the governor’s ploy by declaring it unconstitutional for a governor and Legislature to take
$62 million raised by the coalition and help correct the state’s revenue shortfall.

Sandoval, a former federal judge, believes the ramifications of this ruling mean his efforts to take money from local governments could be found unconstitutional as well, so he decided against using the technique, employed earlier by Gov. Jim Gibbons and lawmakers, to take local dollars to balance the state’s budget.

While the impact on future bond questions wasn’t addressed in the court’s opinion, it would have been one of those practical results.

When the “pro” and “con” arguments are set forth in a future bond question, what might happen if the “con” language mentioned something like “however, the money for police, roads, schools or whatever might be swiped by state officials if they need the dough to balance the budget”?

Even the most avid advocates of a bond issue would hesitate, knowing they might be raising their taxes to create a slush fund for state officials.

The court’s ruling that blocked Sandoval’s plan might have helped bond questions succeed in the future, even though that wasn’t the court’s intention.

The Clean Water Coalition case will be remembered as the ruling that forced Sandoval’s immediate about-face on five out of seven taxes about to expire. The five taxes that won’t sunset accounted for $620 million in the budget. The court’s opinion moved the GOP governor from “Hell no, I won’t agree to continuing those taxes” to “I have to, there’s no other alternative.”

Sandoval couldn’t see how he could make enough cuts to fill the hole created by the court’s decision.

Let’s look at the vagaries of the budget numbers. State bureaucrats submitted a wish list totaling $8.3 billion. When he stopped laughing, Sandoval said he wanted to roll back the state’s spending to 2007 levels, which would have been
$5.2 billion over two years.

The budget he actually submitted to lawmakers was $5.8 billion.

But the budget agreement this week totaled $6.2 billion in general fund dollars.

Now $6.2 billion happens to be the budget of the current biennium, so Sandoval and lawmakers are simply keeping the budget flat.

But when all the other funding sources are tallied, including federal dollars, the spending for the next biennium is $500 million less than the overall spending in the upcoming budget —- something Sandoval takes great pride in.

Despite all the sound and fury, the protests, the tent camps, the coffins filled with letters, despite all the television ads objecting to Sandoval’s proposed budget, the budget wasn’t enhanced, it was merely jiggled around.

Oh, and just how does the budget agreement treat the mining industry? Mining is going to pay an extra $23.8 million by losing some deductions.

However, the deal between Sandoval and legislators allowed $37 million in temporary mining claim fees to sunset, so mining still saved more than its additional burden.

Once again, in the tally of legislative winners and losers, mining won more than it lost. Bet your bippy that was not an unintended consequence.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.