This Legislature deserves a victory lap

Four years ago, I decided to run for the Assembly because I felt an obligation to give back to the state that has given my family and me so much. At the same time, I was not content with where Nevada was headed.

I didn’t run for the Assembly to be a caretaker of the status quo. I had watched for years as one legislative session after another ended by nibbling around the edges — not digging deep enough to find real solutions. Even in my first two sessions, I was frustrated by what felt was being content with failure.

This session had to be different. And it began when Nevada’s voters elected a Republican governor and Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature for the first time since 1929. Nevadans infused Carson City with new members, new ideas and completely new leadership. Failure, defined as simply following the status quo, was no longer acceptable.

As we gathered in Carson City in February, I tried to imagine what this drastically new legislature would accomplish. Individual bill requests, inexperience and infighting had kept Assembly Republicans busy until the eve of the session. And many feared the session would be a disaster — that an inability to govern and petty partisanship would lead to unfinished work or worse.

Fortunately, few, if any, of these fears came true. On the contrary, the 78th Session was a tremendous success, a transformative moment in Nevada’s history. This has been widely reported in the press.

What did we accomplish? No doubt many Nevadans have already heard about this session’s new investments in education and new policies such as our trend-setting universal school choice program.

But to focus only on the brightest and boldest colors is to miss the whole picture.

We did far more than simply create new programs or provide new investments. We put a decaying status quo in the rearview mirror and redirected our ship of state toward a brighter, more promising future than I ever thought possible.

We fixed the nation’s worst construction defect laws, made school construction and other public works more fair and less expensive, helped seniors and veterans obtain needed services, demanded transparency from elected officials, reigned in frivolous litigation and passed meaningful collective bargaining and PERS reform.

Most of all, we embraced the most comprehensive and aggressive education reforms ever attempted by any state at any time. We expanded opportunity for all Nevadans and substantially increased education resources, accountability and choice. We gave schools what they needed to succeed and supplied the pressure to make sure they did.

We supported mentor programs for struggling teachers and scholarship programs for new teachers. We boosted successful programs for kids in poverty, gifted students, English language learners and children with disabilities, as well as in science, technology, engineering, math and career technical education.

We expanded school choice through opportunity scholarships, potentially more effective and responsive school districts, charter school expansion and education savings accounts that give every family real control over their children’s education. We created the Achievement School District, which puts proven charter school operators in charge of continuously failing schools.

But as great as these reforms were, they highlighted a painful truth: we also needed increased investment, which meant higher taxes and greater sacrifice from a business community still recovering from the Great Recession.

Such sacrifice is never easy, especially for someone like me, a third-generation Nevadan who had been so fortunate to live in the Silver State for the last 40 years.

Like many, I was torn between the old Nevada I knew and the new Nevada we had to become. Old ideas worked for the old Nevada, but they were not working anymore.

During this session, it would have been easy to say no to difficult reform, increased spending or new taxes. In the whirl of 120 days, there are always reasons to say no. But I wasn’t there to kick the can down the road. I wanted to fix problems; I wanted to say yes to real solutions.

It was not easy to say yes to taxes, but it was easy to say yes to a new Nevada. A Nevada that values investments in our future more than maintaining systems, programs and policies that do not make Nevada better.

I was proud to stand with the majority of my Republican caucus, 30 members of the Assembly, nearly every state senator and Gov. Brian Sandoval to put an end to business as usual and the failing status quo.

Nevadans deserved better, they expected better. We have planted the seeds of success, and I, for one, am excited to see the new Nevada we grow into. Failure is no longer an option.

Paul Anderson, a Las Vegas Republican, represents District 13 in the Nevada Assembly and serves as the Assembly’s majority leader and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.