(Sean Whaley/Nevada News Bureau) – Democrat gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid told the Nevada News Bureau yesterday there are other options for moving the state out of its current budget crisis besides increasing taxes and cutting programs.
In an interview at a local coffee shop, Reid pulled out two pieces of paper. One showed an organization chart for the state’s public education system from 1989. The other shows how it looks now.
The newer chart showed many more layers of government, including advisory panels, legislative committees and other bureaucratic creations that have evolved over the past 20 years.
Reid said the two charts demonstrate one way Nevada can save several hundred million dollars: by streamlining government services to eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies in state government.
Reid, who is trailing GOP candidate Brian Sandoval in the polls, said he has experience balancing budgets as chairman of the Clark County Commission, budgets that are as big as the Nevada general fund budget.
“I know how to do this,” he said. “I’ve balanced it in good times and in bad for seven years running without new taxes. There are more than two options. The third option nobody talks about is to remake our government.”
Clark County had multiple housing authorities at one time, but Reid said he worked to consolidate them into one agency. There used to be multiple public health agencies, now there is one.
Reid did not back off his no new taxes stance, saying the state unemployment rate, the foreclosure crisis, and the overall economic situation in Nevada makes the idea of expanding such levies a nonstarter.
“We need a leader in Carson City that knows how to reform government structures,” he said. “If we do what needs to be done, we will save hundreds of millions of dollars and still maintain services by reforming our government.”
Reid said he will be putting out a proposal in the next several days addressing this issue in more detail.
Reid said Sandoval is offering no realistic solutions, instead saying he will avoid layoffs, protect vulnerable citizens and government services and still balance the budget.
“That is impossible,” Reid said.
Sandoval did not immediately reply to a request for a response to Reid’s comments.
Reid weighed in on the state’s budget problems as state Budget Director Andrew Clinger has spoken in recent days of the severity of the impacts facing Nevada when the Legislature convenes in February.
Clinger said the state is facing an estimated $3 billion shortfall in the revenues needed to sustain state government for the next two years, or nearly 50 percent of what would be a $6.5 billion general fund budget.
On Monday Clinger said new taxes might be avoided if the state and counties worked together to more efficiently divvy up the delivery of government services and the revenues used to pay for them.
Even so, both Sandoval and Reid have steadfastly rejected any notion of raising taxes as a partial solution to the state’s budget problems.
In an interview today on the KRNV Channel 4 noon news, Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said he would not reject out-of-hand the idea of new or increased taxes as one option to solving the state’s budget crisis.
“There is no question that we are facing a very severe problem, the largest shortfall in our history,” he said. “We did take money from counties last time, cities and counties, and there is a bottom to that well also.
“No one wants to advocate raising taxes, or new taxes,” Raggio said. “We will probably have to look at restoring the taxes that are going to sunset. But I don’t think anybody should take a blood oath that we’re not going to look at that.”
Raising taxes is a last resort, he said.
“But I wouldn’t take it off the table,” Raggio said.
The 2009 Legislature raised the sales tax and the modified business tax on the state’s largest employers as part of a solution to balancing the current budget. Those taxes will expire on June 30, 2011 unless they are extended by the Legislature.
Reid said there is one other way that Nevada can get out of its budget crisis, and that is “growing” out of it through economic development. There are $5 billion worth of energy projects getting close to construction that will generate construction jobs and tax revenues to the state, he said.
Last year there was an article in the Reno Gazette which stated that the Legistrators are receiving (if I recall) $245,000.00 in per diem for each legistrator. Why not cut this in half if Mr. Reed, Sandoval, Riggo, and Gibbons are really concerned about Nevada (which I am prepared they are NOT) this would be a major cost savings to the
Tax payers. All gov’t knows is raise taxes, but how do they expect anyone to pay these new taxes if there is no jobs You do not see the gov’t officials cutting the fat from their paychecks, but the poor clerk who is barely making ends meet.
First of all, Reid is a liar like his nefarious father, and the school data he presents falls under the time frame for Harry’s bumbling antics. We need tax cuts to businesses, not new tax increases. We need to stop payments to illegal aliens under our welfare system, and we need to make sure that all jobs are held by legal citizens. If this is not done by either Party, then the whole discussion budgets is nothing more than semantics and finger pointing.
Ads by Rory whateverhisname iscriticize Brian Sandoval for wanting to layoff 5,000 teachers yet Rory W’s plan offers no way to pay for the teachers that Sandoval is supposedly going to layoff. Sandoval’s and Rory W’s plan are simular so why does Rory W depict his plan good and Sandoval’s plan as a disaster? Rory W is criticizing Sandoval for what Rory W will have to do because he offers no funding for the 5,000 teachers.
Also Rory W is using the labor dispute between county and the fire fighters as a way to look conservative even though unions dominate the decisions of the Clark County commission to the extent that Rory W voted with the majority to accept a union contractor’s bid on highway construction even though the bid by a non-union contractor was substantially lower.
It should come as NO SURPRISE that the: “Candidate with NO Last Name”
should “clothe” himself with the cloth of Conservatism, as this has been a
frequently employed TACTIC, of the Summerian/ Babylonian, Masonic cult of
the Secret Ancient Mysteries of the arts of Law, (Woe be unto the Lawyers!).
When youve been CORRUPTED by the KoolAide of the “District of Criminals”:
{MONEY}. as Scarry Harry Reid has, assuming the role of Changling
(like O’bama)is a convienient GUISE and SCHEME to DECEIVE the
asserted “Ignorant Masses” of “WE THE PEOPLE” the “POWER and SOURCE
of ALL Powers” extended to Govenment in America, that RORY REID LUSTS
FOR to taste the “ELIXIR of POWER” that pulses thru his contumacious: avarice
(Greed) and Cupidity (insatiable thirrst for MONEY) filled veins, as HE, Rory is
HIS Fathers SON!
This bias to DECEIT, is “cause for pause,” requisitive of EXAMINTION, of his
TRUE MOTIVES: (THIRST for POWER and DOMINATIOm of ‘Goyim” (mere
cattle to be Abused for HIS and his TRUE Masters, EVIL purposes of
DEMONIC DESTRUCTION!
Perhaps the reader may wish to Google the :Thiteenth Tribe” and Learn of the
Truth, of the Curse of Cainannan and Learn of the Dark One’s plan for “Forced
Slavery”, of all whom do not worship the Evil One.
Man may not serve GOD /Yhwh and mammon as one will demand the
Allegiance of the Other in the comming Battle of GOOD and EVIL on this earth!
ELECT NO career politic (many blood sucking insects) ians, or ESPECIALLY
Attorneys or LAWYERS and we MUST: install TERM LIMITS to CRUSH the
conSPIRITorial Dynasties of the RULING/DOMINATING ELITIST Class!
May God Have Mercy on the Continental American Constituional Republic
de jure?
Didn’t the above poster used to be communications director for the Clark County Republican Party?