Gamers in for battle

An October telephone poll commissioned by the Review-Journal found Nevada voters support by a margin of 3 to 1 a teachers union proposal to increase the gaming tax by 3 percentage points and hand the resultant extra loot -- about $400 million a year -- primarily to members of the union.

Seventy-six percent of those polled backed the teachers' proposal, 22 percent opposed it and 2 percent were undecided.

That's almost twice as many voters as the 39 percent who said they would support a competing initiative petition proposed by Las Vegas lawyer Kermitt Waters, which could triple the gaming tax.

Pollster Brad Coker, with Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., interpreted those results to mean Mr. Waters' petition is "dead on arrival. ... People want to increase the gaming tax, but they don't want to put the casinos out of business."

What? An acknowledgement that taxes can actually be raised high enough to kill the goose? Will wonders never cease?

The union proposal -- which would have to be OK'd by voters in 2008 and 2010 -- would increase the tax by about 45 percent, from 6.75 percent to a rate of 9.75 percent.

The gaming industry has responded with a TV ad campaign stressing that it already foots about one-third of the bill for the public schools. But a new poll published Monday by the Reno Gazette-Journal indicates that hasn't accomplished much. The new survey of 600 likely voters found 68 percent still believe the Nevada State Education Association's proposal is "just right."

"This is really bad news for gaming," said Erik Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "They've been running their feel-good ads about 'Look how much we contribute,' and nobody's buying it."

Indeed.

Unfortunately, the leading lights in Nevada's gaming industry have been reluctant to make principled arguments for a low-tax environment, overall.

But one thing is certain. If the teachers' proposal gets on the ballot, it has an excellent chance of passing.

Which will make it very interesting to see what steps the gamers and their supporters will now take to keep this thing from getting on the ballot, in the first place.

The Nevada Education Association needs to gather 58,628 valid petition signatures by May 20.

Stay tuned.