EDITORIAL: Don’t forget the reforms

In case lawmakers needed a reminder, our support of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s budget — and the tax increases needed to fund it — is conditional. Major government reforms must be part of the deal. And with less than a week remaining in the 2015 Legislature, not enough of those reforms have passed.

Back in 2003, the Legislature approved then-record tax increases on the promise that more money alone would lift Nevada’s struggling education system. There was no reform agenda. Not surprisingly, the performance of the state’s schools did not substantially improve.

It’s not enough to boost education funding. The state’s public education system must be remade.

Among the bills that still haven’t made it to Gov. Sandoval’s desk: ending social promotion by preventing the advancement of third-graders who aren’t proficient in reading; allowing the state to take over persistently underperforming schools and let charters operate them; expanded school choice through education savings accounts; and breaking up the Clark County School District into five precincts.

However, education reforms aren’t enough. Lawmakers must pass major labor and pension reforms, as well, to ensure new tax dollars go farther and aren’t consumed by a rigged collective bargaining process that overwhelmingly favors unions. Pension contributions consume an ever-larger share of governments’ operating revenues because public employees have been promised too-generous benefits the public can’t afford. Labor and pension reforms are as essential to the state’s future as an improved education system.

If major government reforms are rejected, tax increases shouldn’t pass, either.