However you figure it, government has done well

To the editor:

The Tuesday letter from Assemblyman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, offered corrections to some budget analysis that the Review-Journal attributed to me in a July 15 editorial.

The analysis I first posted on my Web site blog (www.beers4nevada.org) on July 4 includes links to source documents placed online by state government in Carson City. In other words, I "show my work." Assemblyman Denis' letter does not cite his sources.

Assuming he is correct and I am wrong, there's pitiful little difference in the big picture.

If he's right, then Nevada's general fund grew 244 percent from 1996 to 2007. I think I originally wrote around 250 percent. Not much change.

Meanwhile, his corrections change the 73 percent budget growth from 2003 to 2009 (projected) that I wrote about way down to 71 percent. I compared this to a projected rate of inflation and population growth over the same period of 51 percent, which Assemblyman Denis does not apparently dispute.

The rest of his letter seems to be a "red herring" argument because it does not address any of the analysis I did.

Note: By using the most recent, sharply reduced 2009 revenue projection and an old, probably too-high population estimate, the 2009 taxes-per-person figure that Assemblyman Denis projects is much too low for reasonable comparison to the 1996 taxes-per-person he cites (without attribution).

Your readers should note, as well, that if we go back far enough in time, we can pick a starting year when revenue was down and an ending year when revenue was up and "prove" that growth pays for growth. Vice versa, we can pick a starting year when revenue was up and an ending year when revenue was down and "prove" that growth doesn't pay for growth.

As my dad taught me, you could lay all of America's statisticians from end to end and still not be able to reach a conclusion. Most regular people, however, see pretty clearly that our state and local governments (that'd be Assemblyman Denis' employer when he's not legislating) have been growing much faster than the rest of us for most of this decade.

Bob Beers

LAS VEGAS

THE WRITER, A REPUBLICAN, REPRESENTS, DISTRICT 6 IN THE NEVADA SENATE.