Nevada’s Legislature (thankfully!) only meets for roughly 120 days every other year. Let’s face it, they do enough damage as it is. Can you image the trouble we’d be in if those people were allowed to meet every year on a full-time basis. Oh, the horror!
Nevertheless, when not in session the Legislature still has found a way to continue making decisions on how to spend our money through a sub-committee of budgetary “cardinals” known as the Interim Finance Committee – IFC for short. The IFC continues to meet and make decisions every other month when the full Legislature is not in session.
There are 21 members on the IFC out of the full 63-member Legislature (and not ONE of them is a bona fide fiscal conservative!) – which means that when this body makes legislative decisions, it does so without 66 percent of those members who Nevada’s citizens elected to make those decisions.
Folks, if that’s not unconstitutional, I’ll eat a bug.
Over the past week, Nevadans watched as this rogue legislative body attempted to even further overreach its constitutional powers by infringing on the governor’s authority regarding oversight of the federal stimulus money. But rather than risk a constitutional challenge to the very existence of the IFC, the “cardinals” backed down and Gov. Gibbons got his way.
But maybe it’s time for Nevada’s citizens whose elected legislators aren’t members of the IFC to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this body themselves.
Is there a conservative attorney out there, along with maybe some conservative law students over at Boyd, who would be willing to take up this effort? And while you’re at it, maybe look into the constitutionality of having two separate property tax cap rates, as well as charging banks a higher payroll tax rate than every other business in the state?
Doesn’t equal protection under the law apply in Nevada?