LAS VEGAS:
Nevada's roller coaster budget crisis now looks likely to throw a major loop in the reelection plans of the Senate's Democratic whip, Harry Reid.
Last Thursday, the Nevada Supreme Court threw out a portion of the Nevada Constitution that requires a two-thirds majority of both houses of the Legislature to raise taxes. For the Legislature, now 15 days into the new fiscal year without approving an education budget or the tax increases to fund it, the surprise ruling allows lawmakers to pass both measures with a simple majority and bypass their inability to achieve the supermajority. The Assembly passed a $788 million tax increase yesterday, 26-16. Numerous attempts to pass a budget with a supermajority had failed. The Senate started debate yesterday.
Several top Democrats here initially cheered the decision because it meant an easier route to passing about $800 million in new taxes and a 35 percent increase in state spending, but that enthusiasm is waning as the potential damage to Reid's future comes into view.
Reid's most likely opponent, Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons, authored the initiative to enact the supermajority rule in the mid-1990s. More than 70 percent of Nevadans voted for it.
On Saturday, Gibbons looked as if he was already on the stump when he stood in front of the Supreme Court in Carson City and claimed six justices, including five Democrats, overreached in their ruling, which passed 6-1. A Democrat partially dissented.
''Even though Harry Reid has nothing to do with this at all, this is going to create a huge right-wing backlash, especially if Gibbons runs,'' said Robert Forbuss, a Democratic activist who is helming the Nevada presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. ''Congressman Gibbons already had a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court that is probably a signal of the launch of his campaign.''
The former state Republican Party chairman, Steve Wark, agreed: ''I am sure that Republicans and independents and conservative Democrats are going to wrap this Supreme Court ruling around Harry Reid's neck. He's going to have a very difficult time being on the side of the largest tax increase in the state's history.''
Gibbons said yesterday he won't decide whether to run until August, but he is under intense pressure by the White House to take on Reid, whom the Bush administration blames for stalling the confirmation of federal judges.
''The next election will be about the future of children of Nevada and about giving the people of the state back the voice that they lost Thursday,'' Gibbons said in an interview. ''This is not about Jim Gibbons or any decision I make.''
Reid, who did not return calls for comment yesterday, was already seen as vulnerable. He squeaked out his last reelection in 1998 against John Ensign by the closest margin in state history, about 400 votes. Ensign was elected to the Senate two years later.
Yet in the topsy-turvy world of Nevada politics, it was the GOP governor, Kenny Guinn, who praised the court ruling. Guinn has been at odds with his own party because he viewed his recent landslide reelection as a mandate to raise taxes. Guinn sued the Legislature on July 1 when the new fiscal year started without a schools budget, prompting the ruling.
''There's been a lot of talk about how this is trashing the constitution, but the Legislature trashed the constitution by not meeting its deadline to fund education,'' Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin said yesterday. ''The court chose to address the reason why education wasn't being funded. That superseded the need for a two-thirds majority.''
The proposed school budget is $1.65 billion and requires about $800 million in new taxes to fund it.
Funding education in Nevada is a major issue because the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas, is the nation's fastest-growing district. With 27,000 new students enrolling each year, the district must hire 1,600 new teachers each year to keep up. With the budget in limbo, however, the district hasn't been able to offer jobs to their best prospects, so many have taken jobs elsewhere because the next school year starts in many places within six weeks.
While Reid may be able to use Guinn's support to inoculate himself and can attack Republicans for failing to provide for Nevada schoolchildren, some observers doubt it will help much.
Republican lawmakers said they support funding education and blame Democrats for linking the education budget to tax increases.
As the political arguments heat up, Clark County Schools superintendent Carlos Garcia just wants to pay his teachers. The Supreme Court remedy was precisely the one suggested by the school district's brief.
''Children were used by everybody throughout this process and probably will continue to be used,'' Garcia said. ''Our job is to get funding for kids. Kids don't vote. We hated that that's how it had to come to closure, but on the other hand, we can't keep waiting.''
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