Capitol Issues

Joining me on set is Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus. Welcome. Thank you. Nice to be here. You heard Senator AMA day talk about his new bill the one that talks about the Blue Ribbon Task Force. He says he wants to take some of the money from the sale of cars and automobile fixtures and redirect that money to transportation. Will that work. Well it it makes sense you know the cars are using roads and we need to build the roads and probably it'll be more politically popular to redirect existing revenue than to increase some other taxes and that bill includes a lot of different sources of revenue just like the blue ribbon panel's recommendations. But if the governor says he's not going to sign any bills with increases where does that leave us. Well that's the problem he said no taxes no. So we can talk about it all we want to but if he's going to veto it it really doesn't it's not it's most instant to spend the time doing it. Another area of the area of fees we keep getting conflicting reports whether there is support by the governor for some fee increases or not. Do you have a better handle on them.

Well he's really locked himself and we asked for a statement from the administration of just what does he mean by that. And he sent over a copy of a letter that was just totally indecipherable it's sometimes it's a fee sometimes it's not sometimes it's a tax or a rose by any other name. I don't know what it means so I think it's just kind of capricious. Some see some it doesn't but it a lot of the charges go into pay regulatory bills and so I don't know what we're going to do if he's not going to raise those babies either. So does that put things like some of the gaming areas in jeopardy. Well the gaming regulators asked for a fee increase that's paid bag aiming to cover the cost of the regulators. If they then allow that they increase that means the taxpayers will end up paying for those regulators to look at the industry of gaming so it's just a shift of cost to the taxpayer. Even though he pretends like it's a savings of money is that the same thing that could happen with some of the ethics legislation where you have proposed ethics training for a lobbyist that I assume would be paid through fees.

Exactly you want to try and lobby as to be more ethical we've got to get the money somewhere they should sign up and enroll. Well the program just like it's school or something but if we're not going to be allowed to do that then I guess the program goes by the wayside. It's kind of penny wise and pound foolish if you ask me. And I know this week you mentioned something else turning out the lights What about utility cost. You know we have gotten the governor's budget and we have had today 71 amendments to the budget that many mistakes have been made and they say more are coming. And one that hasn't even come yet that we pointed out is in a lot of the big budgets there is no inflationary cost for utility payments. And they said oh the bills aren't going to go up. Well I asked the PUC can you tell me bills are going up so I can tell my constituents your power bill is not going up. Well of course they can and it's just the opposite. So where do you get the money you can't turn the lights off in the prisons and the schools you know so they come back what in the interim session and ask for money right and then that allows the governor to say See ass saved you money I had a low budget is the legislature that spanned it and that's really

not honest with the voters. So where do you think the budget mess winds up at this point. Well Senator as you and I met yesterday and he's got staff doing a list for us that we'll have next week of just where we are with the projections with all the one shots with the predicted lower revenue that's coming in on May the 1st just to see how much money there is available. It's not a pretty picture. All right and we'll check in with you up in Carson City this week and see what those cuts mean. Good. Thank you. You're welcome. Capital issues will continue in a moment.