MUTH’S TRUTHS

I hate to say I told you so, but…

No, actually I don’t mind saying it at all. And during the last Nevada legislative session I said that the increase in the state’s general fund spending budget was too much. And guess what?

It was too much.

Had the Governor and the Legislature limited the spending increase to the rate of population growth plus inflation, spending would have increased by about 14 percent. But the Governor proposed a spending hike of 18 percent, and the Legislature - including each and every elected Republican - voted to increase spending by more than 20 percent.

Now the spit has hit the spam. There’s a tightening in the real estate market, the economy in general is slowing, and tax revenues are down. As a result, Gov. Gibbons has instructed most of government to tighten its belt by cutting spending by 6 percent.

I’m sure I’ll have the math here wrong, but if you take a 20 percent increase and subtract 6 percent, that leaves you with…viola!…14 percent. Which is the figure spending would have been capped at had the Governor and Legislature limited their spending hike to the rate of population growth plus inflation. What a coincidence, huh?

For some reason the Governor’s order didn’t include K-12 education. Which is a shame. There’s a bundle just sitting there, for example, to expand full-day kindergarten. But I digress.

Like clockwork, all the usual figures are having a cow over the notion of cutting spending. And the biggest moooo’er of them all is University Chancellor Jim Rogers. What a shock.

Cutting 6 percent from the university system budget would come to a relatively small $64 million out of a total budget of some $1.3 billion. But Rogers told “Face to Face’s” Jon Ralston that the university system is already “falling apart” and that such a budget cut would be a “stab in (the) heart.”

“We’re not going to do that,” Rogers says he said to the Gibbons. “We can’t do that.”

We’re not going to do it? Would somebody please tell me who died and made Jim Rogers governor. Last time I checked, he didn’t even run for the office, let alone win it. Exactly who the heck is this man to tell the Governor and taxpayers “I won’t tighten my belt”? He sounds like a petulant child. I haven’t seen the interview on Jon’s show yet, but I’m envisioning the man stamping his feet while holding his breath ‘til he turns blue.

I remember as a kid my dad telling my younger brother to take the trash out. My brother told my dad he wasn’t going to do it. So my dad said that when he finished taking out the garbage he was then going to do the dishes. My bro’ said he wasn’t going to do that either. So my dad said after he took out the garbage and did the dishes, then he was going to clean the basement. My brother, hard-headed German that he was, still didn’t get the message and said he wasn’t going to do it.

The rest of us kids were cheering him on, “Go, Greg, go! You tell him!” Because every time Greg said he wasn’t going to do something…bam!…he ended up with another one of our chores. It was a thing of beauty. I didn’t have to cut the grass for a month!

But back to Mr. Rogers. According to him, there just isn’t a dime to spare in the university budget. So Gov. Gibbons reportedly asked him what Mr. Rogers thought the Governor should do. And I’m sure his answer is going to shock you.

“I think your first obligation is to provide services for all the necessary things that government should be providing services for, and then you balance the budget,” Mr. Rogers told Mr. Ralston that he told Gov. Gibbons. “You go out and find the revenues if the revenues are in excess of what you’re doing now.”

Rogers said that meant calling a special session of the Legislature and raising taxes. The Governor, to his credit, reminded Mr. Rogers that he wasn’t going to raise taxes.

This is, in fact, EXACTLY the conversation this state desperately needs and should have had during the last legislative session. But the players opted to kick the spending can down the road instead of addressing it. I’m adamantly opposed to raising taxes, but we simply cannot keep adding huge new increases to government spending without eventually running out of money no matter how vibrant our economy is. However, that’s exactly what Nevada’s Legislature has done - and that includes spendaholic Democrats AND rubber-stamp Republicans.

The discussion this state needs to have is what, in Mr. Rogers words, constitutes the “necessary things” that government should be providing.

Is college itself a “necessary thing”? No. A lot of folks successfully make it through life without a college education. College isn’t exactly food, shelter, clothing or 99-cent shrimp cocktails. I’m not saying college isn’t beneficial to a lot of people, but it’s not “necessary.”

And why should the government be running a university system at all? There are an awful lot of good PRIVATE colleges and universities out there. Maybe we should be discussing if $1.3 billion to fund a university system at all is “necessary.” Or at the very least, whether or not everything Mr. Rogers’ university system is spending our money on is “necessary.” For example, is a dental school really “necessary”?

And then go through the rest of the budget, line by line, and ask the exact same question: Is this necessary?

Which brings me to my final point, and then I’ll let you get back to doing all the necessary things in your life.

Every time I bring up spending cuts, someone asks, “Well, smarty pants, what would you cut?” And that’s a fair question. But in order to answer it, you need to have the same information the Governor’s office and the Legislature have. Which is why I pushed so hard for spending transparency during the last session.

In a growing number of states - sometimes legislatively, sometimes by executive order - every dime the government spends is now being disclosed on a website which each and every citizen can readily access from their computer at home or office.

This information is already recorded and available on Nevada’s internal computer system which is maintained by the Controller’s office. All the government needs to do is make that internal information available to the public. And then let the public start picking through all the “necessary” things the government is currently spending our money on and decide whether or not it is truly “necessary.”

At the very least, the Governor could implement this good government reform via Executive Order for his own office. That would set a good example and be a good start. So what about it, Governor?

Until the government opens its books to the people, there should be no special session and no tax hikes. And when Jim Rogers or someone else asks, “What would you cut?” - just respond, “Show me the books and hand me a red pen. Lots of ‘em!”

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