Yes, I’ve heard howls of protest from some GOP legislators, special interest lobbyists, and political consultants over yesterday’s Muth’s Truths column about Republicans in Carson City voting to raise taxes.
Many obviously don’t understand – or refuse to accept – the Gibbons Tax Restraint law that was passed by voters – TWICE! – in the 1990s. So here’s a refresher course…
The law refers to a constitutional amendment in Nevada that requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in both houses of the Nevada Legislature to approve any bill that increases, generates, or creates new public revenue (i.e., raises taxes or fees).
This law is named after Jim Gibbons, a former Nevada assemblyman (and later governor), who was the principal author and advocate for the measure.
It was designed to make it significantly more difficult for the state government to raise taxes, reflecting strong anti-tax sentiment among Nevada voters.
The intent was to ensure that any tax increase had broad, bipartisan legislative support or was approved directly by a majority of voters if passed by a simple legislative majority.
Repeat: Or approved DIRECTLY by a majority of VOTERS.
SB451 and AB530 – as well as AB69 and AB545 – are tax hike bills currently in front of the Nevada Legislature.
I wrote about SB451 and AB530 in yesterday’s column.
AB69 would extend a temporary sales tax hike in Nye County. And only two Republicans – Assemblywomen Jill Dickman and Heidi Kasama – voted against it. It’s now in the hands of the Senate.
AB545 would jack up your smog test fee when what we SHOULD be doing is getting rid of the smog test entirely – or at least for newer cars that have enhanced pollution control technology.
And to be sure, each of the tax hike extension bills is an effort to get around the Gibbons tax restraint law by allowing county commissioners to pass the tax hikes rather than a direct vote of the people.
It’s just plain wrong, if not illegal.
And in case legislators aren’t sure whether a bill is a tax hike or not, all bills subject to the Gibbons Tax Restraint law include a very prominent disclaimer right at the very top of the bill (see below).
So there’s no question as to whether or not these bills are tax hikes. They are.
That’s not me saying it. It’s the LCB (Legislative Counsel Bureau) which posts the notice at the top of the bills. It’s also what the Nevada Supreme Court said in 2021.
The two bills (SB551 and SB542) at issue in the Settelmeyer decision – named after former GOP Sen. James Settelmeyer who sued to block the tax hikes – were extensions of existing taxes and fees that were scheduled to sunset (expire).
SB 551: This bill extended the existing rates under the modified business tax (MBT) past a planned July 2019 sunset date, thereby preventing a scheduled decrease in the tax rate.
SB 542: This bill extended for two years a $1 technology fee motorists pay to the DMV, which was also set to expire.
The Nevada Supreme Court ruled that, even though these bills extended existing taxes and fees rather than creating new ones, they nonetheless “create, generate, or increase public revenue” under the state constitution’s supermajority requirement.
So no matter what any special interests lobbyists tell our legislators about these bills, they are, in fact, tax hikes. And GOP legislators shouldn’t be schmoozed, strong-armed, or bamboozled into voting for them and give Democrats “bi-partisan” cover.
Star Trek fans will recall Capt. Kirk’s view of the Kobayashi Maru test – the so-called “no win scenario.” His attitude was that there’s always an alternative – even when none seemed to exist.
And there are certainly alternatives to raising taxes – including the “more cops” tax hike, as detailed in this column by former Assemblywoman Annie Black.
I’ll close with this…
It wasn’t all negative fire-and-brimstone outrage that I received over yesterday’s column.
A couple GOP legislators reached out after reading the column and acknowledged they’d listened to the wrong people and made a mistake.
So I’m not going to politically hang them for it.
Lobbyist pressure is a serious reality in pressure-cooked Carson City. And if these Republicans learned their lesson and go forward without falling for it again…well, welcome back prodigal sons.
Remember, Ronald Reagan himself made a similar mistake. But after realizing he’d been misled, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.
“In 1988 Reagan complained that the 1982 tax increase that he reluctantly embraced was among the worst decisions of his presidency,” Reagan speechwriter Kenneth Khachigian wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal.
The rule for Republican legislators in Carson City going forward this session should be exactly what Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott of the U.S.S. Enterprise famously said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Or as Pete Townsend of The Who sang: “We don’t get fooled again.”