Union leader against teachers’ plan

RENO — The state leader of the AFL-CIO in Nevada said Tuesday a proposal backed by the teachers’ union to raise taxes on casinos would make the state too dependent on a single industry.

The AFL-CIO, with 120 affiliated unions and more than 200,000 members in Nevada, has not yet taken a formal position on the tax increase proposed by the Nevada State Education Association but Danny Thompson said the coalition has opposed such ideas in the past.

Thompson said the state AFL-CIO is likelier to support a broad-based tax increase to help deal with a projected state budget shortfall and generate revenue to cut into a $4 billion highway construction backlog.

"You can’t rely on one industry for the solution. It has to be everybody," Thompson, the group’s executive secretary-treasurer, said Tuesday on KRNV-TV’s "Nevada Newsmakers."

The teachers’ initiative is aimed at boosting education on spending in a state that ranks at the bottom nationally in per-pupil spending, backers say.

The proposal would add another 3 percent tax on gambling revenues collected by casinos that gross more than $1 million a month. It would raise the taxes for such clubs to 9.75 percent, and generate at least $250 million a year.

"NSEA believes a 3 percent assessment for education on the largest casinos, which gross $1 million or more a month, is more than fair," NSEA president Lynn Warne said in unveiling the proposal last month.

"Gaming taxes in Nevada are the lowest in the world," she said.

The initiative — "Save Our Schools with Additional Funding" — would have to win voter approval in the 2008 and 2010 elections before it could take effect. The filing of the plan enables the group to start collecting at least 58,628 signatures needed by May 20 to get on the ballot.

Thompson said taxes on the hotel-casino industry already pay for about half the state budget.

"They pay taxes no one else pays — slot tax, gaming tax, room tax, sales tax, property tax, entertainment tax," he said.

"If you make it 70 percent and you have a bad day … I remember 9-11. The two states most impacted were Hawaii and Nevada. Hawaii because you have to take an airplane or boat to get there. And Nevada because our economy is based on tourism and mining and that is pretty much it. It was devastating," Thompson said.

"If you say you are going to increase taxes on this one group only, and there is a 9-11, are you going to close the school down or let the prisoners go?"

Thompson said it was a different climate in the 1980s when Nevada was the only place where large-scale casino gambling was legal.

"Today you can go to Sacramento and gamble or Chicago and gamble. You can go to any city in the country and gamble. If you take all the money away from them, there’s nothing to keep them here," he said.

Thompson said a significant percentage of the AFL-CIO’s membership in Nevada depends on casinos, whether through direct jobs or related work, especially construction.

"The amount of investment going on by these companies in this state is astronomical," he said.

About 4,000 workers are constructing the CityCenter project in Las Vegas, the single largest project now in the nation, he said.

"At this time next year, there will be 10,000 workers on that project," Thompson said. "These are multibillion-dollar projects, like City Center. If you take that money away from them and don’t look at everybody else, they will not be hiring those people."

Warne said the group will have no problem getting the necessary signatures to get on the ballot, but acknowledged passage of the measure would not be easy.

"We will be facing well-funded opposition from the gaming industry and their mercenary consultants," she said last month.

"They will most certainly spend many millions of dollars trying to make the case this measure is unnecessary. We have full confidence that the voters of Nevada will see through these well-rehearsed political talking points and, together, we will save our schools by passing this measure."