Nevada treasurer rewrites state budget
By Laura Myers, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Putting together a budget for the state of Nevada isn’t so easy after all.
State Treasurer Dan Schwartz, who proposed to the Legislature a spending plan to rival fellow Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval’s budget, said he’s rewriting it because Nevada can’t raise $540 million as he’d like from a proposed $5-per-passenger airport fee. That’s because those fees are controlled by the federal government and prohibited by states.
“It doesn’t work,” said Schwartz, a conservative who’s working with state Controller Ron Knecht on his budget plan.
Schwartz was scheduled to present his proposed alternative budget to the Senate Finance Committee today.
Politicians NEVER look at real spending cuts. It’s always about finding new ways to milk the citizenry. Nevada’s becoming California way too fast.
Instead of charging legal citizens fees, start charging those illegally in the state a services fee of say, start at 10k a year for every person illegally in the state to help pay a small portion of providing for the extra costs relating to the millions illegally in the country for courts, the jails, the prisons, schools and health care for starters as those in DC have ignored requests for reimbursement for years. I am sure there are a lot more services to add to it from state roads to providing utilities.
It appears that the semantic tricks of lawyer-politicians didn’t work this time. Calling a new tax a fee has been tried before (“read my lips, no new taxes”) and didn’t fool many people. Wouldn’t it be more simple to either recognize that the State needs more money and raise taxes appropriately; or, alternatively, cut spending to bring the budget in line with the available income? Call it what it is for once in your lives. Leaders don’t do much leading nowadays, regardless of their party affiliations.