THE REAL WINNERS AND LOSERS
New taxpayer advocacy group spotlights irresponsible state spending at www.BudgetWatchNevada.com
BY MARK WARDEN

With this year’s legislative session in the books, it is time to ponder once again who the winners and losers were in the legislative lottery. As is always the case, the losers are Silver State taxpayers, and the winners, generally, are government agents and civil servants who support the ever-increasing weight of gigantic bureaucracies, and who get paid handsomely to do so.

Those who fared worst from this biennial debacle, while all along getting the most lip service and feigned attention, are Nevada’s K-12 students. Once again, the government-knows-best crowd in Carson City failed to deliver real reform in our failing top-down system of collective inculcation. The very simple and easily applied idea of increased competition among schools and educators — in the form of vouchers, credits and smaller school districts (in Clark County) — was yet again tossed aside in favor of throwing more money at a flawed system. While wasting time on demanding more full-day babysitting — whoops, I meant kindergarten, an unproven mandate that harms as many children as it supposedly helps — legislators ignored programs that parents, students and employers really want such as more vocational training.

Transportation issues captured a lot of attention this year. Instead of making hard decisions and engaging in meaningful research and debate on highway, beltway and roadway issues, your beloved assemblymen and senators were fighting about at what age a child must wear a bicycle helmet or a life jacket.

And, of course, one of Nevada’s most critical issues is whether you wear your seatbelt in the car that you purchased with your hard-earned money, or risk being subject to an unconstitutional stop by a heavily armed “peace officer” with a badge.

Independent voters and citizens who want lower taxes and limited government (and represent a significant base in Nevada) seem to have been forgotten by our elected officials.

The problem is that legislators enter a whole different reality when they pass through the Capitol’s doors. They worry more about sexy issues of the day (such as methamphetamine use) than about meaty issues like road infrastructure or education reform. Your elected officials, and special interests that author many of their bills, rarely talk about accountability in the agencies they want to throw money at, or point to less-important programs that should be cut, minimized or de-funded.

Republicans and Democrats alike crow about fiscal responsibility, but don’t provide any productive ideas on where to cut back on obsolete or ineffective programs. So I’ve provided real ammo for their blank-shooting rhetoric with a comprehensive offering of suggested cuts to bloated state spending in www.BudgetWatchNevada.com. With a nonpartisan analysis of the budget and common-sense approaches to helping government be more efficient, more constitutionally true, and more lean, the site provides more than $500 million (yes, half a billion dollars!) in possible spending cuts that would improve our economy and prioritize taxpayer dollars where they are truly needed.

The site also lists “pork” bills from the session, shining light on the murkier, smellier bills that legislators put through to indirectly line their pockets or those of their campaign supporters.

Most legislators are aware of the website’s insightful recommendations, and several have reviewed them and agree with their premise. But are they willing to do anything about it? Hardly. Lawmakers don’t reduce government; they expand it.