MUTH’S TRUTHS

(Carson City, NV) - The following letter was emailed and faxed to Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey this afternoon…

Dear Assemblyman Mabey,

I watched your appearance on Sam Shad’s “Nevada Newsmakers” program yesterday and was shocked by your comments regarding tax hikes, as well as the false information you conveyed regarding our conversations about the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

To refresh your memory, the promise you made to the voters of your district and to the citizens of the state of Nevada in your campaign last year was that you would “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” So imagine my surprise when I heard this response from you to a question by Mr. Shad regarding funding options for highway construction during the current legislative session….

“I would look at…maybe an increase in the licensing fee for a driver’s license. I could see, I personally, if the gaming people would support it, a tax on a room. . . . I think that would be a way to tax mainly tourists who come to our facilities here and not tax the citizens of our state.”

Where to begin?

First off, if you should vote for any such tax or fee increase, you will have clearly broken your word given to the voters of your district and the citizens of Nevada. If your word isn’t your bond, that’s something you and the voters of your district will have to work out in the next election.

Secondly, you stated that your position on a room tax hike is subject to gaining advanced approval from “the gaming people”? Do “the gaming people” get to decide all of your decisions on public policy issues, or just those involving the room tax? While I fully appreciate the enormous importance of our state’s largest industry, I don’t think the voters of your district quite realized that you were being elected merely as their proxy in Carson City.

Perhaps you should consider “revising and extending” your remarks on a possible room tax hike which is subject to a veto by “the gaming people.”

I was also rather disappointed in your position favoring a room tax on tourists, the lifeblood of our economy. I just don’t understand why you would favor penalizing people for visiting our state, dropping a few coins in a slot machine, catching a show, dining in one of our restaurants and shopping in our stores. What did these poor people ever do to you?

And since there seems to be some confusion on your part in this matter, allow me to advise that a tax hike is a tax hike for the purposes of the Pledge you made to your voters and the citizens of Nevada, regardless of who is paying it.

In addition, apparently I need to point out to you that Nevadans themselves travel within the borders of Nevada quite often and, therefore, would be subjected to this room tax hike of yours. So yes, you absolutely would be raising taxes on “the citizens of our state.”

But perhaps more importantly, from a purely philosophical standpoint, “sticking it” to the out-of-state tourists who visit us is just plain…un-American.

At one time, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was confronted with a similar “tourist tax,” his being on car rentals. Here’s what Gov. Bush had to say about that effort to sock it to the tourists of his state in his veto message:

“While I appreciate the inclusion of voter approval as a prerequisite to implementing the new tax, these taxes will be paid disparately by tourists visiting Florida, consequently creating taxation without representation. Philosophically, I cannot support this.”

I would encourage you to take a page from Gov. Bush, as well as our Founding Fathers, and abandon your support for raising taxes on the tourists visiting Nevada…even if “the gaming people” give you the OK.

The most disturbing aspect of your comments on Mr. Shad’s show, however, was the misinformation you conveyed about the Taxpayer Protection Pledge you signed last year. You stated that you were told that if you changed your mind, you could just send in a letter rescinding your Pledge and everything would be honky-dory. I never told you any such thing.

You were informed that the Pledge binds you from election cycle to election cycle and that if, in the future, you changed your mind and no longer wished to be bound by the Pledge, you could send in a letter rescinding it and then run for re-election, giving the voters an opportunity to decide if they wanted to change their minds now that you were open to raising their taxes.

You simply can’t make a promise to the voters in a campaign in order to get elected and then change your mind in the middle of the legislative session. In the real world, that’s a discredited practice referred to as “the ol’ bait-and-switch.” And we have truth-in-labeling laws against such things for products and services. Perhaps we need a similar law covering politicians?

If you choose to rescind your Pledge in writing and run for re-election unbound by it in 2008, fine. But make no mistake; any vote you cast this legislative session to raise taxes, even on tourists, could only be viewed as you breaking your word to the voters of your district and the people of Nevada, including “the gaming people.”

As I teach my children, as I hope you do yours, a promise made should be a promise kept.

Sincerely yours,

Chuck Muth
Citizen Outreach PAC

cc: Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform

Posted on April 19th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada