Meet the new session, same as the old sessions

Once more unto to the breach, dear friends, once more.

Once more, we find ourselves on the brink of a legislative session, one at which Democrats and Republicans will fight over too-scarce resources. The question of introducing more revenue into the state’s budget – through new or increased taxes, or adding to the list of the things we tax – is once more hanging over Carson City.

Once more we have a Republican governor, declaring he will not sign any bill that increases taxes, beyond a budget in which he’s already extended taxes that were supposed to have expired back in 2011.

Once more we have liberals pointing out that businesses in Nevada (other than casinos) pay nothing on their revenues, and that mining companies still enjoy a constitutional limitation on their taxes that dates to the founding of the state.

Once more we have conservatives saying new or increased taxes will hurt business and kill the state’s nascent recovery (although those same taxes don’t seem to have that effect in our next-door-neighbor states, which all have lower unemployment than we do).

And once more we have Democrats talking about programs that would require (at least) tens of millions of dollars in new taxes, but failing to directly call for a tax increase.

All of this has happened before. And there’s a very good chance that all of this will happen again.

On Wednesday, Democrats put out an education policy agenda that includes pre-kindergarten for at-risk students, full-day kindergarten, reducing class sizes, ending social promotion and shifting school funding so districts with at-risk, non-English speaking, special-education and gifted students get more of the state’s education money.

These are worthwhile goals. What would have made the agenda even better was an estimated cost and an identified source of money to pay for it. Democrats say they first want to establish consensus around their ideas before they delve into the costs, but in this case, the costs will drive the consensus.

But even if we knew the “how much,” it’s much harder to answer the “where from?” Democratic leaders were asked by the Las Vegas Sun’s David McGrath Schwartz recently whether they favored raising taxes, and of the many words generated thereby, a simple yes was not to be found.

Give the Democrats some credit for strategy: If they came out strongly for raising taxes at this stage, they’d more easily be typecast as tax-and-spenders who care only about socking it to big business and mining concerns. Even if Democrats were to present a tax package stapled to a list of specific education spending, identifying exactly what they’d pay for with the new revenue and explaining exactly why it’s important for the future of the state and its kids, the likelihood is that the plan would run into rough seas early on.

Then again, we’ve tried the Old Way before, in which candidates and officeholders pretend tax increases are the furthest thing from their mind, ploddingly review the state budget over months of hearings and – shocker! – discover at the end of the session that they need more money than the state will have in the next two years. Only then do they say, “Oh, hey, look, here’s a dandy tax plan that just happens to be sitting right here!”

If history teaches anything, it’s that consensus has to be built around both the problems and the solutions, and that it has to start early. That means dreaming big, being honest about what those dreams would cost, and not being afraid to say taxes are on the table.

If we’ve learned anything from the history of past sessions, it’s that we sure don’t want to repeat them.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.