Marlene's Musings

Marlene Lockard
Nevada NewsMakers Politcal Analyst
Nevada NewsMakers Blogs

With just a mere two weeks left in the legislative session, you’ll find the majority of the committee rooms dark, doors closed. The committees have processed their bills and now lobbyists roam the halls waiting for the back room decisions to be made. 

 

In less than a day and a half there have been “private” meetings on transportation, prisoner release policies, and despite Senator Townsend’s assurance that the “green bill” revisions would be done in the light of day, private meetings continue behind the scenes with a “presentation” (read: here’s the deal) to a joint hearing.

 

Of course this is nothing new. This is business as usual. The big, contentious issues get settled by a few behind closed doors and the resulting “compromise” gets presented to the entire body, often with only days or hours left to review.  No tinkering allowed out of fear that the “fragile” compromise could go kaput. 

 

The only questions left are who will be in what meetings and who won’t. If you assume the chair(s) of the judiciary committees who have worked on the prison sentencing and release issues all session would be included, you would be wrong.

 

Welcome to the Nevada Legislature

Those without juice need not knock.

The first move on the legislative chess board for all day kindergarten was made last Thursday when the money subcommittee dealing with education met to close budgets.

 

It wasn’t pretty. Assembly Democrats slashed and burned the higher education budget thereby setting up opening rounds of negotiations for the closing of the K-12 education budget.

 

So much for the whole K-16 concept: funding education as a whole instead of the traditional battle between higher ed and K-12.

 

-         Out went $1 million for the Whittemore-Peterson Institute

-         Out went the P-21 Council

-         Out went the Women’s Research Institute

-         Out went workforce development

-         Out went the money for DRI’s (or the state’s) groundwater study

-         Out went maintenance dollars for the Davidson Academy

 

Keep in mind that these cuts won’t hold, at least not all of them. This was just the opening salvo. The Assembly Democrats are determined that funding higher education in Nevada not be at the expense of funding initiatives for K-12.

 

Legalized robbery is probably the better word for it. Speaker Barbara Buckley presented her bill today (3/28/07), AB478, to close the loop holes for the “evaders” of the 2005 legislation trying to put some limits on those companies who make their living by preying on the misfortunes of others.

 

Strong language? You bet. Listening to these sharks whine about how they will be put out of business if Buckley’s bill passes is pathetic. They should be put out of business.

 

I was around when the statute that now apparently allows this dubious practice was amended. The intent at that time was to enable Citibank to come to Nevada. It was for an economic development purpose. But ah, that law of unintended consequences. 

 

I commend Speaker Buckley for her legislation to limit these companies. I would like to offer a friendly amendment:  prohibit this usury practice altogether.

The legislative halls were filled with grassroots lobbyists – (legislative speak for regular citizens) – many brandishing badges invoking the question Speaker Barbara Buckley posed, “Whose child will you leave behind?” Yesterday launched the Assembly Democrats’ education agenda: a press conference, followed by an education rally on the steps of the legislature and concluding with the initial hearing on all day kindergarten.

 

It is very hard to find someone who is not “for” education and rumor had it that the Assembly Republicans had some sort of responsive press conference to jump aboard the education bandwagon although no one seemed to discern their message except they don’t support the democrats’ agenda.

 

So here we go again. Some of us are old enough to remember the old “kids versus cons” debates that were a regular component of the money committee hearings years ago. (Maybe that is why we never seem to inch up in the education ratings.)   

 

Yesterday’s hearing highlighted, among many facts, that the state of Nevada devotes less than one quarter of the resources to each child in school than the state support for each convict in the prison system (approximately $6,000 per student compared to more than $20,000 per inmate.) A lot of people are questioning Nevada’s priorities.

 

 After all this talk about “education first,” why isn’t it? The budget document, which supposedly reflects the priorities of the proposer (in this case, the Governor) is most notable for what it lacks when it comes to education, actually reducing the state percentage of the state general fund devoted to education.   Ed Vogel outlined many of those budget deficiencies in his recent article in the Las Vegas Review Journal, LVRJ.

 

When Nevadans get a chance to have a good look at the suggested funding for a new prison compared to the depleted education budget, they may start asking what all this “education first” ballyhooing really means.