Budget Watch Nevada

Here is my letter to the editor sent to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper on in response to Jon Ralston’s editorial of May 06, 2007.

Dear Editor,

In Sunday’s editorial by Jon Ralston, he accurately reflects many policy-watchers’ sense of “deja vu” in this year’s legislative session. To many, it seems that the Gang of 63 is constantly whining that they need more money, and it’s always for nice-sounding, nebulous expenses like “better” education or transportation or to help the mentally ill.

The problem is that legislators, and the special interests that author many of their bills, rarely talk about accountability in the agencies they want to throw money at, or point to less-important programs that should be cut, minimized, or de-funded.

Independent voters and citizens who want lower taxes and limited government, who represent a significant base in Nevada, seem to have been forgotten by our elected officials.

Ralston correctly notes that “Republicans . . . bleat about cutting spending and waste and then can’t provide a list longer than a half-page.” How (sadly) true that is! So I’ve provided real ammo for their blank-shooting rhetoric with a comprehensive offering of suggested cuts to our bloated state spending in www.BudgetWatchNevda.com. With a non-partisan analysis of common-sense approaches to helping government be more efficient, more constitutionally true, and more lean, the site provides over $500,000,000 (yes, half a billion dollars) in possible spending cuts that would improve our economy and prioritize taxpayer dollars where they are truly needed.

I’ll have to agree with Chancellor Jim Rogers’ assertion that “sooner or later, the free ride is over.” That could not be more applicable than to his own NSHE (Nevada System of Higher Education), where the customers (students) only pay 15% of the total cost of our universities and colleges. We taxpayers pick up 85% of the tab. This kind of socialistic subsidy makes us all look like suckers, especially when large numbers of entering freshmen, even Millennium Scholars, require remedial math and English classes.

So let’s stop “enabling what happens . . . in far away Carson City” and ask our elected officials to make the tough decisions, and exercise more fiscal and moral responsibility. Let college students pay a little more of their own way, end massive subsidies to colleges and businesses, scrap the inflationary, union-rigged “prevailing wage” construction contracts, and go build some roads!

Mark Warden
Las Vegas

According to the L.V. Review-Journal article on May 17, the “Clark County School District’s general fund budget for the upcoming year will exceed $2 billion for the first time.” Of course, Superintendent Ruffles and his lapdogs at the School Board ALWAYS remind us that the budget “represents the tremendous growth in the CCSD.”

But the growth in the budget far exceeds projected student enrollment changes. In fact, enrollment grew between 2003-04 and 2007-08 (estimated) by 17.1%. Okay, so the budget should grow at roughly the same rate, right, with maybe a slight bump for inflation?

That’s correct, if you think in linear mathematics terms and use common sense. But when it comes to spending your money, the District uses exponential mathematics. So to cover this 17% growth over 5 years, CCSD is spending 58.5% more money. That must be the “new math,” or “fuzzy math,” or as I call it, “monopoly power bureaucracy math.”

In responding to public cries for deconsolidating the CCSD, the District always argues that they enjoy economies of scale that smaller districts wouldn’t achieve. By their very logic, then, the rate of spending increases in the budget should decrease, and the cost per student should go down, not up.

It is high time the legislature take responsible action:
1. Break up the inefficient monster that is the CCSD.
2. Enable vouchers and credits for private schools, charter schools, home schooling.
3. Welcome competitive forces into this bureaucratic, monopolistic morass.
4. Demand accountability from educators, administrators, and students.

Not even a year has passed since his election, but is it time for Secretary of State Miller to resign?

According to conservative political watchdog Janine Hanson of Nevada Families Eagle Forum, “The Secretary of State Ross Miller is promoting AB606 & 604, which severely interfere with the Constitutional right to petition. It is because of his support that these two terrible bills may pass. AB606 turns the SOS into the Speech Police for petitioning, creating a very anti-petition climate.”

Yours truly has worked exhaustively on a few petition drives, and I’m here to tell you it is very difficult to qualify for the ballot. The last thing we need is Ross Miller making it even more difficult for YOU to have YOUR VOICE heard in Nevada politics.

Here’s the note I sent to the SOS-NV comment line; you might consider doing the same.

“Mr. Miller should not be involving himself with changing the political aspects of the ballot petition process. He can weigh in on small technicalities, but to get behind legislation that would INCREASE HIS POWER in deciding what is and isn’t “free speech” is unconscionable and a clear conflict of interest.”

“Miller should recuse himself and his staff from any testimony on AB604 and AB606 in regards to who can gather signatures and what they can be paid, and determining what people “think they heard” about petition language before signing. Any such regulation is hostile to free speech and to the people’s right to participate in the legislative process.”

The biggest joke of all in this legislation (AB606) is a new section that a person collecting signatures “shall not intentionally misrepresent the contents of a petition or the effect that such a petition would have if enacted into law.” (Emphasis added by me)

Do you see the sick irony and hypocrisy? Politicians and elected officials are CONSTANTLY misrepresenting the effect that their legislation will have on the populace. That’s what they do. They obfuscate, misrepresent, twist, and spin the facts into feel-good sound bites. But if YOU DO IT, there is hell to pay.

What does charity mean to you? To most people, it means giving money or time VOLUNTARILY to a cause you believe in strongly. To legislators, charity means FORCING you and me to pay higher taxes to give money to the bureaucrats in programs and agencies that THEY believe in strongly.

See the difference? One is accomplished through love and true generosity; one is done through special-interest nepotism and coercion.

We at Budget Watch Nevada are a philanthropy-loving, non-coercive group. We like to highlight examples of private sector, private citizen solutions to perceived public problems or issues. Take books for children, for example.

While some legislators are trying to fleece the taxpayers by allowing school districts to spend unused/unneeded DSA dollars on new library books outside of the normal library books budget (thus spending up to the maximum possible even when districts don’t need it for textbooks) local student groups and citizens are simply taking matters into their own hands when they see a need. As reported in the R-J, Las Vegas-area schools and students, along with individual and corporate sponsors, raised $30,000 and collected over 23,000 books to distribute to youngsters. A non-profit group called Spread the Word Nevada coordinated the activities.

Lesson to legislators: we don’t need you and your omnipotent government to do EVERYTHING for us. Sorry to disappoint you.

Mark Warden

Post Script: I dare say that most students would be better off reading some of the books in my library, with authors such as Ayn Rand, Robert Kiyosaki, John Ross, Andrew Carnegie, Adam Smith, Harry Browne, Henry Hazlitt, Stephen Covey, and Milton Friedman than much of the statist gobbledygook they currently get in classrooms. I’d be happy to donate them (again, voluntarily) to school libraries or summer programs for children and teenagers.

Recently in the R-J it was reported that Gibbons is asking the Legislature to cut spending by $118,000,000 in order to meet the REVISED revenues estimate by the Economic Forum, an appointed board that estimates state revenues. Although the estimate is a difficult academic exercise, they almost always overestimate revenues, giving the idiots in Carson City carte blanche to spend all the money that’s expected, whether it’s needed or not.

So when an estimate is actually revised downwards, everyone panics, especially the friends of government employee unions and teachers unions.

Of course nobody bothers to mention that overall spending is up 50% in the last 6 years, but they are only concerned about next year. There’s never any going back to more conservative spending; no, it’s all about the future and the newfangled programs they have in store for the masses.

Budget Watch Nevada has dared to shine a light on this misspending, to unveil the wizard behind the curtain. Go to www.budgetwatchnevada.com to see some easy, common-sense recommendations for cutting government largesse and finding normalcy in state spending of your tax dollars. With April 15 fresh in memory, we should all be hypersensitive to the government’s abuse of your pocketbook to satisfy its special-interest spending urges.

In a recent Assembly hearing, according to the R-J, Speaker Buckley said, “that she wanted to protect her typical constituent — an elderly woman who is 70, living on fixed income, doesn’t want a government subsidy for phone service, doesn’t have a cell phone or doesn’t use the Internet,” referring to a proposal by regulators to cap phone bill rates.

Of course, the leftist legislator has no qualms about increasing property taxes. The basic phone bill from Embarq is about $15 per month, or $180 per year. An average property tax bill on a home valued at $200,000 is around $1,800 per year. Where’s the outpouring of concern for her typical constituent on that? An elderly woman may use the phone every day, but she may only drive the local roads a few days a week, and chances are very high that she doesn’t have children in government K-12 schools, which are funded in part through property taxes.

Another burst of disingenuousness came from our state’s “consumer advocate.” Keep in mind that doesn’t mean taxpayer advocate. “I think rate caps are a good idea,” Eric Witkoski, chief of the attorney general’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and state consumer advocate, said during the first hearing on a bill that would eliminate price regulation of basic residential phone service.

The article continued: “Witkoski also suggested that the Public Utilities Commission be directed to monitor the land-line telephone industry each year and determine that local telephone markets remain competitive.” It seems to us at BudgetWatchNevada that the simple economics of deregulation as seen in lower prices in long distance phone service, air travel, etc. are lost on this taxpayer-supported bureaucrat. I wonder if he supports price caps on government-imposed taxes and fees.

What are we to make of Saturday’s article in the R-J reporting that a recent poll shows Governor Gibbons’ approval rating is sucking hind teat? Not much, really.

From where I sit — right of center and philosophically grounded — I think his job so far has been lackluster. But you and I actually FOLLOW politics fairly closely, unlike the average Joe Voter out there, so we have reason to be displeased. But what about our neighbors who don’t pay much attention?

I think that the general public is so used to hearing emotion-provoking rhetoric, that unless the Guv is saying “we need to kill rapists and spend another billion on government programs and regulate every drop of every liquid you put in your body and search schools for terrorists,” then they think he isn’t doing ANYTHING. If all you hear is that he promised not to raise taxes, then it’s just mundane, yawn-inducing stuff. So when it comes around to answering a pollster, most people really don’t have a strong opinion either way.

I’d bet more people know how much the Mayweather/De la Hoya fight costs on Pay-Per-View than know how much they pay in property taxes. People just don’t pay that much attention to local politics.

So what’s YOUR approval rating of Gov. Gibbons, and more importantly, why? I’ll give him a C- grade because his proposed budget includes an increase in spending of $648 million over last biennium, and I haven’t heard him talk of actually CUTTING any SOCIAL PROGRAMS or EASING BURDENSOME REGULATIONS. Feel free to share your opinion here on this blog.

How can the Guv get a better grade? Easy. Just follow some of the suggested cuts found in www.BudgetWatchNevada.com.

As I’ve been pointing out for some time now, there is plenty of fat to cut from the state budget. This was confirmed by the state budget director in an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on April 18.

Since we all know that government bureaucrats love more bureaucracy and support it at most levels, we can assume that there is a LOT MORE where that came from, meaning that the director’s cuts are probably conservative and need to be expanded.

According to the article, “a projected revenue shortfall of nearly $137 million has been erased with a series of cuts and recalculations of Nevada’s budget needs for the coming two fiscal years, state Budget Director Andrew Clinger said Wednesday.”

“Now, the nearly $7 billion spending plan proposed by Gov. Jim Gibbons is slightly in the black. The biggest single factor in the budget revision was a reduction in the expected caseload of Medicaid recipients. That change alone, state Health and Human Services Department chief Mike Willden said, cut the projected revenue shortfall by more than $50 million.”

Fifty million dollars! Just like that! I say, that’s a good start. Keep cutting.

The story continued, “while there are cuts in some programs, including mental health services, Willden said there will be “few if any” actual reductions in services to individuals. Clinger said he would describe the cuts in proposed new initiatives as modest.”

“A $110 million one-shot appropriation to the Nevada System of Higher Education to build its multi-campus health sciences system has been reduced by $15.8 million. That would be accomplished under the governor’s plan by cutting a renovation of the Shadow Lane Campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.”

“A $10 million project for stream restoration has been cut to $5 million.”

“A $5 million-a-year economic development program recommended by Gibbons has been eliminated, saving another $10 million.”

These are the very kind of cuts I have been recommending for months. You can see more of them at www.BudgetWatchNevada.com.

The largest cuts must come from the two elephants of tax spending: Human Services and Education (especially higher ed). We all survived just fine on the budgets of 4 and 2 years ago; we don’t need yet another 10% increase in spending, after a hefty 21% increase in the prior biennium.

When Sen. Bob Beers offered a bill to authorize teachers in Clark County schools to carry weapons on campus, many people thought it was a silly ploy to get media coverage. The bill’s premise became dead-serious today, though, with the mass murders of students at Virginia Tech.

We’ll let Bob bring you up to date on his common-sense legislation to unwind victim disarmament rules currently in place:

“As I draft this newsletter, the number of dead is 32 on the campus of Virginia Tech, where a man who was mentally ill went on a murder spree this morning. Just last year, the Virginia Legislature rejected a measure that would have allowed the hundreds of people who were on that campus this morning and who hold a permit to Carry a Concealed Weapon (CCW) to actually carry one. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus,” a Virginia Tech spokesman said at the time. (WorldNetDaily.com)

Similarly, my proposal to allow specially-trained teachers to carry - and, more importantly, to remove our schools from the list of gun-free zones we advertise for terrorists in state law - failed last week in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee on a 4-2 vote. ”

You can follow Bob’s legislative updates at his excellent BLOG.

Who knew that one of Nevada’s most pressing and urgent issues was our lack of a state paleontologist? Thankfully, someone has come to our rescue and has written a BDR (bill draft request) to authorize this new position. It will rank right up there with the state climatologist for “why on earth do we need that?” status.

Of course, your blogger — a self-degreed porkologist — wonders what really is behind such a move. No doubt, someone with close ties to the education monopoly elite has a buddy who is looking for a job. Seems there’s not much work lately in the private sector for fossil diggers. So he gets a politically-connected cohort to float a bill to just manufacture a job and have the unknowing taxpayers pay for it. Sweet deal, huh? I wish the state would make me the State Blogger and give me an office and salary and all of those nice government employee perks like PERS.

SB 135: Creates the Office of State Paleontologist within the Department of Cultural Affairs. (BDR 33-210). For more details, link here.