A bust for gaming?

The gaming industry needs a better slogan.

"What happens here, stays here," has certainly raised marketing to a whole new level in Nevada, so much so, in fact, that "Betting on Nevada" doesn't pack much political punch.

First of all, it's not at all clear these days that Gaming Inc. is living up to its new motto. It's more like, "Macau: What a bargain."

When you spend billions of dollars in China, it's hard for the average Nevadan to believe your in-state hype. Station Casinos spokeswoman Lesley Pittman chalked up all the recent fuss about raising the state gaming tax to a simple problem of public relations. "We've struggled to show the person who lives in this community that their personal economic health is tied to this industry," she said in the Review-Journal on Tuesday.

She might not want to go there. Nevada's streets once might have been paved with gold, but these days they're lined with "For Sale" signs. When the average, middle-class Nevadan thinks about the region's health, thoughts undoubtedly turn to schools, traffic and crime.

There is a big, fat nexus to gaming, but it ain't the connection Pittman wants us to envision.

If you're concerned about education or health care, you're focused on the way those things are funded.

The casinos hype the fact that their revenue funds one-third of the school system here. That's one-third of the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation.

Gaming is concerned about the multibillion-dollar deficit Nevada faces in building needed transportation projects. If Californians have to crawl along Interstate 15 for hours for a chance to sit in traffic on the Strip, there's less reason for them to come here in the first place.

Of course, if those tourists stay home, they can still do business with the likes of Harrah's and Station Casinos. Harrah's Rincon near San Diego is almost like the real thing, just without cigarette smoke.

It's easier for gaming to argue that it pays its fair share in Nevada than it is to play defense.

Here in Las Vegas, population growth is blamed for everything from high crime to poor schools. We just can't keep pace, the conventional wisdom goes.

Pittman's right about one thing. Without gaming's boom, there wouldn't be such growth. Nor would there be as much need for more cops, new fire stations, nurses, teachers, roads, whatever.

The good voters of Clark County raised the sales tax to hire more cops. Now Nevada's teachers are asking for more money -- and they want the gamers to foot the entire bill.

It's a whole lot easier to win a public relations battle at the ballot than it is to craft good public policy.

Gaming has already reverted to its 2002 line. Rob Stillwell of Boyd Gaming told the Review-Journal, "Other businesses and industries that benefit from our vibrant economy need to have a responsibility to be part of the solution."

That was the mantra in the lead-up to the 2003 Legislature and the biggest tax increase in state history. And yet the Legislature did little more than a symbolic targeting of said "other industries."

The bull's-eye on gaming is the easiest target for more revenue, not to mention one of the most lucrative.

The Nevada State Education Association will launch an initiative seeking to raise the gaming tax rate on the largest casinos by 3 percentage points. The rate would still be less than 10 percent, among the lowest in the nation.

Still, that 3-point increase would generate between a quarter-billion and half a billion dollars a year. The NSEA petition would set aside about 60 percent of that new revenue to improve teacher compensation, with the balance paying for initiatives to improve student achievement.

A competing initiative would increase Nevada's gaming tax rate to somewhere around 18 percent, raising so much money that owner-occupied homes would be exempt from property taxes.

Neither idea is good policy, but that alone won't stop either signature-gathering effort.

If both gaming tax initiatives qualify for the 2008 ballot, they'd compete with a Clark County School District bond measure for new-school construction. How's that for a nexus, Ms. Pittman?

This is what happens when elected officials promise not to raise taxes. Jim Gibbons can sit comfortably in the governor's mansion while the union and casino flacks turn state fiscal policy into 30-second sound bites.

Gaming could, of course, focus on its in-state investments, although Harrah's might not want to include pictures of its 600 shuttered, recklessly remodeled rooms, and MGM Mirage may only want to show the CityCenter model, not the construction site, where four workers have died this year.

That's how we have policy debates these days. And unless gaming can come up with something snappier, it's also how we'll be deciding them.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.