A couple of weeks ago, in a piece titled "Spitting Mad," I told readers about a growing concern among Nevada officials over significant annual increases in home values (up to 54 percent in Clark County) resulting in steep increases in assessed valuations and "windfall" tax revenues expected to flow to counties, cities, school and other districts.

The concern is that in both California and Oregon sharply rising home values and arrogant state legislators sparked citizens' initiative constitutional amendments imposing severe limits on property taxes. Hoping to forestall a Nevada taxpayers' revolt, some officials have proposed legislation to impose reasonable limits on annual property tax increases. Clark County Assessor Mark Schofield would cap increases at 6 percent each year.

I further described how the "tax-consuming classes" (public employee unions, academics and some Democrat legislators) convened a forum at UNLV and declared that property values are bound to go down, so if there is problem of "windfall" tax revenues, it will fix itself in a year. A very prescient prediction but that isn't what has happened in other states.

If they're wrong, the accumulation of big wads of unbudgeted tax revenues will go up exponentially. That would further compound Gov. Guinn's problem of how to return to taxpayers $300 million of excess tax revenues collected from sources other than property taxes.

Concerned that agencies would suffer stress and anguish trying to figure out ways to spend the windfall, the Washoe County GOP, at its Jan. 18 quarterly meeting, adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved that the Washoe County Republican Central Committee urges Nevada's legislature and governor to adopt meaningful and effective property tax relief in the upcoming session. If by March 25, 2005 the legislature fails to do so, the Washoe County Republican Party will encourage its members to support one or more citizens' initiatives for a constitutional amendment to cap property taxes."

They needn't have bothered. Today's column is titled "Spitting Mad II" because on Jan. 31 the Washoe County Commission, Reno City Council and Sparks City Council assembled at a joint meeting to discuss, among other things, what stance to take on the property tax cap question. The county finance director rose to tell the governing bodies that: 1. There is no problem; 2. If there is a problem it will fix itself because property values will go down; and 3. If they don't go down but tax increases are capped at 6 percent, he estimated that the negative impact on the county budget would be slightly less than 1 percent.

Unswayed, Commissioner Jim Galloway moved to adopt the Washoe County GOP resolution. It died for lack of support. All combined, there were 16 councilmen and commissioners at that meeting; all but four of them Republicans, and Galloway couldn't even get a second for his proposal.

Friends, there is a grim lesson to be learned here. As the citizens of California and Oregon found out, you can't rely on any elected body to take any reasonable action to soften the tax blow on homeowners, particularly the elderly and those on fixed incomes. As Arnold Schwarzenegger has discovered, you can't expect elected officials to do what's best for a majority of the people when they are deep in the pockets of special interest groups. So Arnold just goes around them and sponsors citizens' initiatives to get results.

We can hold out hope that Nevada's Legislature will take some action to effect "meaningful and effective property tax relief" but, like Gov. Schwarzenegger, we had better be prepared to accomplish that result by a citizens' initiative to amend Nevada's Constitution.

If so, why settle for a 6 percent cap? Let's go for a Nevada Prop 13!



Jim Clark is president of the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Republican Advocates (formerly Republican Men's Club) and a vice chair of the Washoe County Republican Party. He also serves as chair of Independent Incline.