How State and Local Government Spends Your Money
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The Tax Foundation finds that Nevada now ranks 25th in state and local government spending per person. Fully half the states accomplish their goals of state and local government with less money per person.
This website was created to help Nevadans learn how government is spending all of this money. Browse by topic (above and right) or chronologically (below).
Veteran journalist Ed Vogel wraps up the 2011 Nevada Legislative Session.
Vogel notes “Nevada delivered a balanced budget while taxes stayed the same” but can’t fail to note that both candidates for Nevada Governor last year promised that they would not renew taxes scheduled to automatically expire. The promise – which appears to have been what most Nevadans wanted, if the polls that drove the major candidates’ campaigns were right – was not kept.
It seems every incarnation of the Nevada Legislature complains about the tax structure, then proposes increased taxing and spending. With such transparent and economically uneducated blame being placed on Nevada’s tax structure, it’s difficult to tell if there’s actually a problem.
Check out this report/proposal from the Nevada Policy Research Institute. It concludes Nevada’s tax structure is, in fact, too volatile, and could be made steadier by replacing our current patchwork tribute to short-term political expediency with a flat consumption tax that encompassed all transactions, and also recommends some common-sense measures that would eliminate the public-sector unions’ constant clamor for higher taxing and spending.
The Tax Foundation’s new analysis of the 2010 US Census shows that little has changed – Nevada remains one of the states most successful in shifting its tax burden off of residents and onto non-residents. The new data shows us ranked 49th in the amount of personal income consumed by state and local taxation, but 37th in the amount of total state and local government spending as a percentage of personal income.
Nevada’s citizens have been hurt in this national economy more than people in any other state. Here’s a report on the latest data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis:
Nevadans saw their personal income decline more in 2009 than residents of any other state, a new report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found.
Residents’ personal income in Nevada fell to $102 billion in 2009, down 4.8 percent from $107.1 billion in 2008. That’s not only the worst performance in the nation in 2009, it’s also the second-biggest decline among the states since 1969, the bureau said. Total personal income gauges the combined earnings of all residents in the state. Nevada has always had one of the country’s lower overall personal incomes, because it’s one of the country’s smallest states.
It seems a classic “killing the golden goose” scenario.
Nevadans’ personal income is a function of jobs. Jobs is a function of the economy. The economy grows (and jobs are created) when taxes are not raised. The economy shrinks (and jobs are lost) when taxes are raised. It’s not just government taking away the money that the economy uses to pay for new jobs; just as harmful, it’s what our government does with its money and power: increased regulation presents impossible hurdles for some new businesses; Legislators push Nevada’s minimum wage up higher than our surrounding states, creating a predictable migration of jobs; tax-happy leaders continue to advocate that taxes be raised higher still, scaring away all the small businesses fleeing California to settle in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Texas.
One of the most piercing of all sounds emitted by government is the collective shriek of the workforce at the Nevada System of Higher Education. They claim they’re actually having to take pay cuts as a result of Nevada’s shrinking population (and tax revenue).
While someday it might be true, it doesn’t appear to be true heading into the spring of 2010.
Most everyone agrees that the professors and teaching staff are enjoying a healthy increase in their income this year. It’s the “classified” staff that’s gaining sympathy through doe-eyed looks and cooked books. As it turns out, they generally get an automatic annual pay hike that exceeds any proposed cost of furlough.
Classified Salary Schedules and furlough information:
Teaching Faculty:
The Classified Salary step increases (the pay increase for being there an extra year, excluding increases for promotions and CPI increases) range from a low of 3.3% to a high of 4.6% per annual step. For some reason the highest paid get the biggest percentage step increases. The furlough plan reduced pay by 2.3% per year and the schedule reflects a very small pay decrease (about 0.5%).
The good news for the employees, then, is that they don’t have to work as much and their base pay is not affected; after the furlough is over pay pops right back where it was. The employees can elect to take the furlough at 2.3% a year for FY 10 and FY 11 or get full pay in FY 10 and take 4.6% furlough in FY11. So the furlough offsets most of the classified step pay increases. If someone was at the top of the salary scale, then they wouldn’t get a step increase so for those few employees there would be a small pay reduction (2.3%) to compensate for the fewer hours worked.
Secondly, as previously stated none of the tenured professors were required to take any furlough and thus saw zero pay reduction. The employee’s benefits are also not reduced, just their hours of work.
For an example, picking someone in the middle of the schedule (step 40-1) where the employer pays the full retirement: They were making $51,364.80 in 7/1/08. In 7/1/09 their salary would be $53,452.80 (having moved a step by being there another year). As a result of the furlough, they get approx. an extra hour off a week (taken as a periodic day off without pay). This would reduce the employee’s $53,453 salary by 2.3% to compensate for the time off, reducing her pay to $52,223.
The bottom line for this employee? She is making about $858 a year more than he was the previous year and had to work 2.3% less. This is not ideal, but I find it hard to see how it is some kind of tragedy – certainly not by private industry standards. The tenured profs naturally fair much better than this.
Note that this example is before the special session so it is possible (but not certain) the changes implemented by the Board of Regents following the session will result in a small pay decrease for this employee.
So while a few NSHE employees will see a very slight drop in pay in direct relation to not having to work as much, most will see an increase in pay for not having to work as much.
This is in direct contrast to the biased pablum served to us each day by our TV stations and newspapers. They see the taxpaying private companies as under-taxed and believe increases are needed to pay the public employees what they believe they are due, so they present their viewpoint as fact.
In defense of NSHE classified employees, they correctly point out that their increases over the past decade have trailed those of other government workers. Does that make them poorly treated, or their richer employees of other branches and agencies shameless pillagers of the public trough?
UNLV officials strutted their stuff about town tonight. They were smug since they succeeded in hushing down plans to invest $14-million into a new “practice” facility for the basketball team until the Legislature finished its special session on how to deal with tax revenue falling short of targets.
The UNLV student government members who spent University dollars driving to and shacking up in Carson City to plead poverty at the Legislature must be terribly embarrassed.
Nevada News Bureau