STEVE SEBELIUS: Carole Vilardo was a lobbyist for all of us

The former president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association, who died on Dec. 5 at age 80, knew everything there was to know about tax policy in the state — and most other states, too. And she was generous in dispensing her knowledge to lawmakers, fellow lobbyists and hapless journalists trying to decipher the implications of Byzantine bills.

A seemingly simple question would usually end up turning into a long conversation, but an educational one. You always left knowing way more than you did when you started, things you didn’t even know you needed to know.

“Carole Vilardo has forgotten more about tax policy than I will ever know,” says Jeremy Aguero, the former president of Applied Analysis and a man who knows quite a bit about tax policy. “She was the fiscal conscience of the state.”

And the hats! She was known for her vast collection of hats, which made her stand out in a crowd.

But she would have stood out anyway: In a town filled with lobbyists, all with clients seeking something from the Legislature (or, more often, seeking to stop something from happening in the Legislature), Vilardo was unique. She was the only person in the building who was there strictly looking out for the state’s taxpayers.

In that sense, she was everybody’s lobbyist. And she was very good at it. She was able to summon bill numbers and legislative maneuverings from long-ago sessions on command and tell legislators what had been tried in other states and how it had fallen short. She was an encyclopedia of knowledge freely shared with others.

Her absence had already been felt in the three sessions since her 2016 retirement. But her legacy will live on. “The Carole Vilardo metric will survive Carole,” says Guy Hobbs, another fiscal policy expert. “I will always have that little check and balance of ‘what would Carole say?’”

Hobbs said he and Vilardo would often talk about tax issues. On those occasions where their opinions differed, he says he would ask himself, “Now, how am I wrong?” Such was Vilardo’s reputation. Aguero said a tax bill could be introduced, and by the next day’s committee hearing, Vilardo would be ready with dozens of questions that made it clear she had read every page, every line of the bill, and understood it.

In Carson City, there are two basic types of lobbyists. When some start to testify, lawmakers check their email, do their online shopping or return text messages. But when the second type — let’s just go ahead and name it the Vilardo Type — starts speaking, everyone pays attention because what she had to say was important.

Vilardo was helpful to me many times over the years I have covered Carson City, patiently answering my unlettered questions calmly, thoroughly and plainly enough that even I could understand her answers. She made a hundred columns better.

Even more than that, people enjoyed their interactions with her. Dignified, always classy and always focused on policy and not personality, Vilardo could dissect a bill in a way that even the author could appreciate. Such was her gift. She was from a different era, one in which civility still guided political interactions, not loyalty to a political party or to an individual.

“It’s a loss to the state as a whole,” Hobbs says. “She was one in a million. One in 10 million.”

And we will not see her like again.

One of Vilardo’s favorite sayings warned of the unintended consequences of tax policy, the real-world permutations of ideas debated in legislative chambers: “The devil’s in the details,” she would often say.

But an earlier version of that phrase — “God is in the details,” generally attributed to artists or architects — may be more apt here. Vilardo often said there was no perfect tax, and so the best we could do is to learn from the errors of the past to get it a little more right the next time. To that, she dedicated more than 30 years of her life.

“She will be missed, she will not be replaced, she will not be forgotten,” Aguero says.

A viewing for Vilardo will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Palm Boulder Highway Mortuary, 800 S. Boulder Highway in Henderson. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the mortuary.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.