SPENDING TO FISCAL CONSERVATISM?
Gov. Gibbons doesn't appear to have made any 'tough decisions' now that he's the chief executive
BY CHUCK MUTH

Chuck Muth is president and CEO of Citizen Out reach. He is a professional political consultant. Find more about him and read more of his work at www.chuckmuth.com. Other stories by Chuck Muth

One speech does not a governor make. That being said, while Gov. Jim Gibbons could still go down in history as a fiscally conservative governor, his proposed 2007 budget, as outlined in his first State of the State address, sure won't have fiscal conservatives doing the Snoopy dance in their living rooms. 

The good news is that the government will have a surplus this year. The bad news is that Gov. Gibbons has already spent it. All of it. And there's no planned rebate to taxpayers along the lines of the Guinn/Beers $300 million rebate of 2005. 

Under the governor's proposal, the cost of government over the next two years is going to skyrocket by over a BILLION dollars. Overall, that comes to a hefty 18-percent pay raise for government - significantly higher than the rate of population growth plus inflation since the last budget was passed. How many of you got an 18 percent pay raise this year? 

The governor's proposed budget includes a rather extensive laundry list of new spending and new programs - the Nevada National Guard Youth Challenge; the Nevada Four Core Public Safety Radio Network; 10 new public safety officers to fight meth; housing support for teachers and nurses; enhanced school security; University of Nevada Health Sciences Center; highway message signs and closed-circuit TV cameras; higher Medicaid physician payments; additional hospital beds, etc. 

All of which seems to contradict the governor's call for "a new kind of government … that is leaner." In his State of the State, Gov. Gibbons said: "We simply cannot run the government the same way we've been doing it." Yet that's exactly what his budget appears to do. Government will continue to grow and continue to spend. 

This is particularly disconcerting when you recall then-Rep. Jim Gibbons' public statements back in 2003. "You have to justify to me why we haven't looked at programs that need to be cut," Gibbons said of then-Gov. Kenny Guinn's tax hike proposal that year. Yet not once in this year's entire State of the State did I hear the words "cut" or "offset" when it came to government spending. Not once. 

In a speech before the Nevada Legislature in 2003, then-Rep. Gibbons told state legislators that they needed to make "very difficult decisions." That, he said, "is why many of you chose to run for office, to make the tough decisions. I know I did." He added: "Quite simply, you cannot demand the taxpayers to discipline themselves … if the same has not already been completely and thoroughly demanded by government." 

We agreed with those sentiments back then, and we agree with them today. However, Gov. Gibbons doesn't appear to have made any "tough decisions" now that he's the chief executive. A budget that exceeds even the overly-generous spending cap of population growth plus inflation isn't my idea of complete and thorough spending discipline. 

The $7-billion question for fiscal conservatives is this: If Mr. Gibbons found and called for substantial cuts in government spending four years ago, why didn't he propose those same spending cuts now? 

Oh well, there's always the chance that the Nevada Legislature will discipline itself, control its own spending urges, and roll back much of the governor's spending proposal. 

Hey, stop laughing. I was serious. LW