Budget Watch Nevada

We like to give credit where credit is due, and last week a couple democrats in the legislature did the right thing.

The Nevada politics show on PBS, Capitol Issues, reported Saturday that Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson used his position as chairman of the Transportation Committee to kill a bill sponsored by Senator Dennis Nolan that would have made not wearing your seatbelt while in the car a primary offense. Such a change in the law would give cops and troopers the “right” (in Orwellian double-speak) to pull you over simply for forgetting or choosing not to buckle up before driving the car that you paid for on roads that your taxes paid for.

I’d like to think that Atkinson snuffed the bill in committee because of its authoritarian, nanny-state, liberty-robbing essence, but he probably just thought that it would give cops cover to pull over more minorities. Whatever the reason, we’ll take it, and we’re proud of you, Assemblyman Atkinson.

Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, who is rarely lauded in conservative political channels, gets kudos from me for her amendment to cut funding for Nevada participation in the REAL ID act from $30 million down to $200,000. Wow! That’s the kind of budget cutting that Budget Watch Nevada can get behind. Lamentably, she said that it may come up again next session. She said that the bill’s ramifications and costs were an “imposition on the citizens of this state” and an “expensive project.” Now if she would only use that logic on EVERY BILL she voted on, we’d be in good shape.