How State and Local Government Spends Your Money
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Las Vegas Judge Valorie Vegas has awarded $340-thousand to a company who lost a school district contract. The company provided online classes and tests that teachers could take to get raises, but lost the contract after school district administrators decided the classes were too easy. It’s feelings hurt, it sued. Judge Vegas gave them the money – right out of our classrooms.
The school district is suing, according to coverage in the Review Journal.
Prior to the 1980’s, the Nevada Legislature approached spending with a measured, responsible eye. Over a couple of years back then, it converted to push hard for more and more spending every session. This attitude was not a function of Nevada’s growth rate, which has run at a constant rate since the 1960s.
During the late 80s and early 90s, the Legislature’s zeal to spend led to an embarrassing series of “budget cuts” caused by the Legislature’s aggressive forecasts of revenue. They planned unrealistic increases in revenue, then planned to spend it, then found themselves having to “cut the budget” back down to fit the actual increases in revenue.
This led to the creation of the “Economic Forum” in 1993 – an independent group that is supposed to forecast revenue without the political addictions to spending that tormented legislative leadership.
Here is the economic forum’s website.
At the close of the 2007 Legislature, the forum was forecasting state tax revenue to be $6.8-billion for the two years starting July 1, 2007. Last week, they estimated state tax revenue will be $5.7-billion for the next biennium, a reduction of $1.1-billion or 16%.
Remember, these dollar figures and percentages are measured over two year periods.
The Economic Forum will make their final forecast for the next biennium at the beginning of May 2009; this will be the “final answer” to which legislators will adjust their spending budget for the next biennium.
The Nevada Legislature reduced their plans to increase spending by $73-million dollars, but squeezed savings accounts and borrowed money in order to increase spending by another $267-million dollars during a special session Monday.
Here’s coverage from the Review Journal.
When a Nevada political leader tells you that we’re facing 30% budget cuts, you can be sure that they are an employee, contractor or other direct beneficiary of government spending. Because it’s just not true.
Here’s a great post from NPRI showing the reality of Nevada’s taxes, including the latest projection:
|
YEAR |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
|
% Change |
31.7% |
14.1% |
11.5% |
2.8% |
-2.9% |
-9.1% |
The Nevada Policy Research Institute Thursday turned up the heat on the public agency charged with promoting Las Vegas, alleging the agency has a culture of lax oversight, overly cozy relationships with contractors and spends tax dollars on luxuries such as fine food and wine for officials. NPRI bundled its allegations with thousands of pages of public documents from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the agency it accuses of playing fast and loose with the taxpayers’ money.
Here’s the scoop from the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is one of three “legislative” trade associations that Nevada taxpayers pay a half-million per year for our legislators to belong to (and to luxuriously convene for a couple of times a year, in usually exotic locations).
NCSL just published data showing how each state compares in the category of budget deficits.
Nevada News Bureau