MUTH’S TRUTHS

There is no doubt that county commissions and the state Legislature in Nevada have the ability to place items on the ballot for people to vote on, including tax hikes. There is also no doubt that just because someone has the right to do something, doesn’t mean they should do so.

As the 2007 legislative session winds down, there continues to be pressure on legislators to (1) vote for local tax hikes which were put on the ballot by county commissioners rather citizens, and (2) to put their own tax hikes on the ballot next year to fund highway construction.

I’ll keep this simple here, since we aren’t exactly plowing new ground. The power to tax is the power to destroy; therefore, anything we can do to force elected officials to cut spending rather than raise taxes is a good thing. Politicians won’t cut spending unless absolutely, positively FORCED to do so.

“The people” of Nevada, Nye County, Washoe County and Douglas County aren’t exactly rising up with pitchforks these days demanding that their taxes be raised. Liberals, local politicians, government bureaucrats and moneyed special interests are demanding that taxes be raised.

Fortunately, a good number of legislators, as well as Gov. Jim Gibbons, have signed the Taxpayer Protections Pledge promising to oppose any and all efforts to raise taxes. Unfortunately, some of the people who have made this promise have already broken it this year. Fortunately, Jim Gibbons isn’t one of them.

It shouldn’t be easier to put a tax increase on the ballot than to put a tax restraint or spending control measure on the ballot. In fact, it should be harder. I have no problem with letting the people decide whether or not to have their taxes raised, but…

1.) They should get to decide this EVERY time, not just when politicians find it convenient. Why, for example, are legislators who didn’t let the people vote for the largest tax hike in Nevada’s history in 2003 now saying it’d be OK to let them vote for this newest tax hike for highway construction? Talk about hypocrisy.

2.) If legislators or county commissioners want to put a tax hike on the ballot, it should be an either/or proposition, not a yes-or-no. In other words, it shouldn’t be “Do you want to raise the state’s gas tax a nickel a gallon?” It should be “Do you want to raise the gas tax a nickel a gallon or do you want to CUT the gas tax a nickel a gallon?” Funny how voters are never given that kind of option when elected officials get to put tax hikes on the ballot.

3.) Proponents of putting a tax hike on the ballot should be required to show some minimal level of public support before doing so. And I’m not talking about polling, which can be skewed and interpreted to mean whatever someone wants it to mean. I’m talking about tax-hike proponents being required to go out and collect signatures from actual citizens to place their tax hike on the ballot.

The qualification threshold for this in Nevada is pretty low. For a statewide gas tax hike to pay for highway construction, for example, supporters would only need to collect signatures from 10 percent of the number of people who voted in the last election…and they can gather all of those signatures right in Clark County, where traffic is the worst. What’s so hard about that?

In fact, let’s say it would take the same number of signatures - around 80,000 - to qualify a gas tax hike for the ballot next year as it took for the TASC (Tax & Spending Control) and Education First initiatives last year…or the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative a decade ago. Let’s say you want to shoot for 100,000 to make sure you get enough valid signatures to qualify the measure. And let’s say you have to pay $2.50 per signature to a professional signature-gathering firm that will go out and gather those signatures. That’s a cost of $250,000.

Sounds like a lot of money, right? Right…until you consider that the amount of money which would be generated by the tax hike to fund road construction would be around FOUR BILLION DOLLARS! If the highway construction firms clamoring for this tax hike can’t come up with a quarter-million dollars in order to get a FOUR BILLION DOLLAR tax hike, they shouldn’t be playing this game.

Ditto supporters of a room tax hike in Douglas County. There I believe the number of signatures to put the tax hike on the ballot would be around 6,000 signatures. That would be an investment of less than $15,000 for a tax hike which would rake in…over $15 MILLION DOLLARS.

If only you could get a return on investment like that on Wall Street!

The same scenario applies to those looking to raise taxes in Washoe and Nye counties. The cost of gathering the requisite number of citizen signatures on a petition to place a tax hike on the ballot pales compared to the overall amount of money which would be raised.

When a decision to place a tax hike on the ballot is made by legislators or county commissioners, the special interests who fund their campaigns have the advantage.

But if the decision whether or not to put a tax hike on the ballot is made by “the great unwashed,” the special interests’ control evaporates. “The people” might get suspicious of their motives during the months-long signature-gathering process. They might ask some inconvenient questions, such as, “Why not cut spending somewhere else instead?” And not being the beneficiaries of campaign cash and “comped” Rolling Stones tickets, “the people” might refuse to sign the tax hike petition.

Again, the question here isn’t whether or not “the people” should be allowed to vote on whether or not their taxes are increased. Of course they should! Every time. But the real question is HOW such tax increase proposals make it on the ballot in the first place. If they are politician-initiated, that’s a problem. If it’s truly citizen-initiated, that’s another thing altogether.

Which is why I propose The Gibbons Doctrine: If you want a tax hike, you not only have to let “the people” vote on it, but “the people” themselves have to initiate it via a signature-gathering campaign. Period. You don’t have to change state law; you simply decree that as long as I’m governor, here’s what you have to do to put a tax hike on the ballot, because if you don’t, I’m going to veto it.

Think of the signature-gathering phase as the “primary” leading up to the “general” election.

If “the people” of Nye County want to raise their sales tax to pay for more cops or firefighters, then “the people” should circulate a petition and gather enough signatures to qualify the tax hike question for the ballot. THEN let “the people” decide. This is NOT an onerous burden.

If Assembly Democrats want a package of $2 billion in tax hikes to fund highway construction, then make them go out and collect enough signatures from citizens to qualify their $2 billion tax hike for the ballot.

If Washoe County government officials and bureaucrats want to hike the real estate transfer tax to build more schools, then they should simply go out and collect enough citizen signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. It’s just that simple. If “the people” REALLY want the tax hike, they’ll sign such a petition in a heartbeat. If they don’t, then there’s no reason in the world to put such a measure on the ballot where the moneyed interests enjoy a huge PR advantage.

The Gibbons Doctrine: So let it be written; so let it be done.

Posted on May 18th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada