Nevada politics still shrouded in mystery

Perhaps I just don’t get it.

I’ve been covering Nevada politics for a long time — add it all up and it comes to just about 20 years. But there are still some things I can’t quite understand.

For example, the objection made by the mining industry to taxing a single industry, instead of adopting a broad-based tax that affects all industries. While I’m all in favor of a broad-based tax, I have to wonder every time I hear mining make that argument.

Mining is, after all, the only industry singled out in the Nevada Constitution for protection from taxes.

So it’s wrong to subject a single industry to increased taxation, but it’s perfectly OK to protect a single industry — in the constitution! — from taxation?

Besides, there are plenty of other single industries that have unique taxes. The state’s casinos pay taxes on their gambling wins. Banks pay taxes on their branches. Live entertainment venues pay taxes on their ticket sales.

In fact, if nothing else, Nevada’s tax system is a wide variety of single-industry taxes cobbled together into a witch’s brew of revenue.

I also don’t get the idea the mining industry will simply pack up and move away if it’s asked to pay more in taxes on the 2014 ballot. While there’s certainly a point at which it’s no longer profitable to mine gold, so long as it’s selling for $1,593.10 an ounce, I don’t think we’re in danger of saying goodbye to Big Mining anytime soon.

I do get why Republicans in the state Senate are willing to propose a higher mining tax for the 2014 ballot — they want to kill the Nevada State Education Association’s 2 percent business margins tax. (If both measures are placed on the ballot and both get at least 50 percent of the vote, the one with the most support wins.)

What I don’t get is why some think it’s better to go to such great lengths to protect businesses that make more than $1 million per year from taxation, instead of imposing the tax and using the money for the only real economic development plan we’ve got: education.

I’ve said it many times: All the states that surround us have business taxes, and all have lower joblessness than Nevada. If taxes alone killed jobs, we’d be rolling in business while California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Oregon would be deserted.

Yet many Republicans — even the ones promoting a mining tax — still insist on calling any business tax idea a “job killer.”

I also don’t get the cries of pain that went up Tuesday morning as new legislation to regulate campaign finances and lobbying was discussed before a state Senate committee. Independent American Party candidate and longtime lobbyist Janine Hansen complained our freedoms were being truncated by the legislation, which would require candidates to disclose within 72 hours the receipt of contributions of more than $1,000.

The bill wouldn’t ban such contributions. It would just require them to be disclosed. But Hansen’s testimony made it sounds as if Nevada would be instantly transformed into Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. Even after Secretary of State Ross Miller patiently and calmly explained the rationale — he even quoted James Madison! — for the legislation, skeptics such as Hansen were unmoved.

There’s really no credible reason to be against greater campaign disclosure, or rules that say lobbyists have to report their activities and spending on lawmakers when the Legislature isn’t in session. There are a lot of credible reasons to pass such laws, in fact.

But the fact remains, Miller’s proposals will be in constant threat of death from now until the end of the session.

That, I just don’t get.

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.