Legislative Democrats as reformers?

So where's the plan?

Everyone running for office has a plan these days. Republicans hoping to take over Congress unveiled a big one. Rory Reid, the Democratic candidate for Nevada governor, has at least 26.

But the entrenched Democrats who control the Nevada Legislature have nothing. Zippo.

For the past month-plus, the Review-Journal's editorial board has been conducting endorsement interviews for November's election. More than two dozen Southern Nevada Democrats -- incumbents and challengers -- have sat across the table for discussions about the pivotal 2011 Legislature.

Most are trying to frame their candidacies with the same lame talking points. Like an overmatched UFC fighter, they're avoiding engagement and trying not to get pinned.

In an election cycle that won't be kind to Democrats, the unifying message is: Forget my record and my party's record, we're all open-minded reformers now.

In the 2008 campaign, Democrats followed Barack Obama's lead and ran as bipartisan fiscal conservatives openly opposed to tax increases. Then they voted in 2009 to jack up taxes and preserve too much of an unsustainable government.

So they're taking a different tack to try to maintain their majorities in Carson City: They're not committing to anything.

"The state is broken." "Everything is on the table." "What we have now isn't working." "We need a long-term vision for the state." "We really need to review how the state does business top to bottom."

We've heard all those arguments before. Funny how they never lead to smaller government.

Most every Democratic legislative candidate pledged support for economic diversification as a way to boost employment and state tax collections. But they collectively lament that economic diversification really isn't possible without an excellent education system. Businesses would move here, they claim, if our schools weren't the worst-funded campuses in the country.

But the Clark County School District's own accountability data show that funding has no bearing on student achievement. Scan the reports from the district's "high-achieving" schools under the terms of No Child Left Behind, and you'll find that those campuses have some of the lowest funding levels in the system. The reports from the district's lowest-performing schools, meanwhile, show some of the highest funding levels.

In fact, many businesses won't move here because of the impression that all of our schools are terrible -- an impression nurtured by the howling of elected Democrats, the architects and defenders of the public education establishment, that our entire K-12 system will stink until we throw enormous sums of new tax money at it.

Is it too much to ask that someone in this community, in attempting to lure out-of-state businesses here, point out that there are very good schools in the Las Vegas Valley, and that new residents need to be mindful of those schools' attendance zone boundaries when they look for a place to live?

Getting back to the candidate interviews, we ask them how they would come up with all the new money they want to spend at schools. Then they swear up and down that they're not in favor of raising taxes, that they first need to carry out education and budget reforms and find cost-saving efficiencies. Only when that process is complete will they entertain the idea of raising taxes.

Well after the election, of course.

We then run through a short list of education reforms enacted in other states, from vouchers to a stronger charter school law, to increasing class sizes in lower grades to evaluating teachers based on student test scores -- all the bills that get killed by Democratic leadership, at the behest of the teacher unions, every legislative session.

Well, no. Not those. The candidates speak in platitudes about "accountability," but don't have any concrete plans on how to get there.

On taxes, they eventually concede that they'd like the state tax structure to be more "broad-based" and that everyone, especially some businesses, pay their "fair share."

So once the businesses that are interested in coming to Nevada see that we've raised taxes (again) and are pouring new money into schools when funding doesn't correlate with achievement, and that Nevada now has a more broad-based tax system that hits business and a series of school reforms approved by the teacher unions, those businesses will start coming in droves? Call me a cynic, but I don't think so.

Lawmakers need to study the budget, top to bottom, to identify "essential services" and potential cuts? Didn't they do that last year?

Haven't Nevada taxpayers already footed the bill for a half-dozen studies on our tax and government structure over the past 25 years? Didn't Gov. Jim Gibbons' Spending and Government Efficiency Commission come up with a couple of dozen proposals for big budget savings that were rejected without so much as a hearing?

There are literally hundreds of ideas and policy proposals, many of them enacted in other states, that could help Nevada come through this terrible recession without putting more people out of work, and getting the party in power to talk about them is like pulling teeth.

As always, Democrats are petrified to articulate what they really stand for. Oh, they know exactly what they want. But if they say so, they'll be crushed Nov. 2.

The best Democratic quotes from the past month came from Lynn Goya, running in Assembly District 20, and incumbent Assemblywoman Ellen Spiegel from District 21.

Spiegel, who voted for the 2009 tax hikes, refused to discuss the possibility of more tax increases in 2011. "I need to see the package," she said. "I'm not advocating anything." Way to take a stand! In other words, "Leadership tells me how to vote."

Asked what kind of tax increases or changes she might favor, Goya said, "I don't think it's appropriate to make decisions at this point."

If that isn't a pledge to expect more of the same, then I don't know what is.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.