EDITORIAL: Don’t let the sun go down on me

Ben Franklin’s observation about death and taxes rings as true today as it did when he wrote it more than 230 years ago. In the same spirit, perhaps it’s time for an addendum: Nothing is a more certain fabrication than when a politician talks about a “temporary” tax increase.

Nevadans have learned this the hard way many times — and the Clark County Commission has again demonstrated this unfortunate truism.

On Tuesday, commissioners made it clear that they’ll remove the “sunset” clause from a sales tax increase set to expire in July. The seven-member panel voted 5-2 in 2019 to raise the levy by one-eighth of a cent to fund undetermined “needs” after the Legislature authorized the option. The board eventually decided to funnel the money — about $50 million a year — into fighting homelessness, promoting “affordable” housing and subsidizing early childhood education programs.

There was a fair amount of hand-wringing over the move, given that the sales tax is regressive and education is outside the commission’s purview. But, as expected, the urge for more revenue overwhelmed those piddling concerns. In order to get the necessary votes and to mute those who might tar them with the taxaholic label come election time, commissioners — all Democrats — mandated the increase would evaporate in 2021.

Even Ms. Cleo could have seen it coming.

Citing economic upheaval triggered by the pandemic, the commissioners indicated Tuesday that they have no intention of surrendering that one-eighth of a cent. “I think that there’s been a lot of discussion, both in our briefings and here in the meeting today,” Commissioner Jim Gibson said Tuesday, “that suggests that we can’t do without these funds.”

Who’d a thunk it?

In a frustrating irony, the commissioners even foreshadowed this move at the very 2019 meeting in which they passed the “temporary” tax hike. That same day, they also voted to kill the 20-year sunset on a quarter-cent sales tax increase passed in 1999 to fund water and sewage infrastructure projects. The Southern Nevada Water Authority simply couldn’t do without the money, its advocates insisted.

The commission is as well-practiced at this deceit as the Legislature, which in both 2015 and 2019 voted to extend taxes that had passed with expiration dates. Democrats in Carson City last session had such disdain for taxpayers that — in order to avoid the supermajority requirement for tax increases — they argued that making sunsetting tax hikes permanent isn’t actually a tax hike at all. Humpty Dumpty would be proud.

State and local politicians will continue such deception as long as the voters let them get away with it. But elected officials who promote “temporary” tax increases are lying.