Gamers back to court

Last year, the Nevada Resort Association — that’s “the casino industry,” in common parlance — went to court to block a teachers union ballot initiative designed to bump Nevada’s casino tax from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent, allocating most of the money to the public schools.

The gamers argued the proposed constitutional amendment violated a rule that initiatives must deal with only a single subject.

In January, Senior Supreme Court Justice Miriam Shearing — acting as a district judge — ruled for the gamers.

The petition should not have stated the revenue raised from the tax increase would be spent on salaries and other educational programs, she ruled. Instead, the petition should have stated merely that the additional taxes would be spent on education.

On Feb. 5, the teachers union filed a revised petition, which they’re confident complies with Judge Shearing’s ruling, according to officials with the 28,000-member Nevada State Education Association.

Guess what? On Tuesday the NRA sued again, contending the teachers’ new proposal is nothing more than a cosmetic rewrite of the original and should again be tossed out.

The gamers also charge that the way the new money would be distributed among the counties under the proposal favors Clark County, by awarding equal dollars per student statewide, instead of following the current “equalization” formula that pays the rural counties more per student.

OK. And if the court rules — or the teachers agree — to “equalize” the distribution of the new tax money to the state’s school districts, everything will then be hunky-dory with the NRA?

Oh, please.

Should the court order the question to go on the ballot as “Raise the gaming tax by 3 percentage points but we can’t tell you how the proceeds will be used,” how many minutes would you give the gamers before they’d be thundering, “Look at the lack of accountability! They won’t even tell you how they’re going to spend the money!”?

The casino industry, of course, is worried sick that the voters would boot the gaming tax sky-high without due consideration of the consequences. Polling shows that fear is well-grounded, with the proposal currently enjoying a 2-to-1 lead.

But surely, if the public fails to grasp the negative impact of huge tax hikes on the state’s golden goose — costs that would make the industry less competitive in drawing tourists and thus eventually harm the taxi driver, the restaurant worker, the clerk at the dry cleaners — the solution is to start educating those voters to the realities of a competitive world economic environment.

To that end, the gamers have indeed launched “Betting on Nevada,” a campaign that includes advertisements designed to inform Nevadans how much money the industry already contributes to education and other state programs.

The gamers’ goal — avoiding unwise tax hikes that would siphon money from the private sector to fund top-heavy bureaucracies, thus harming the whole state not once but twice — is noble.

But clearly, the industry isn’t convinced that such “educational” efforts will have the desired effect. Thus, they rely on the courts, trying to continue fouling the ball-handler in hopes he’ll never get a shot at the basket.