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I was heartened this spring when, in the face of an utter lack of leadership from the White House, you joined other governors in making tough decisions about how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Nevada is facing new challenges as case numbers rise, the state would be in an immeasurably worse place today if you had not acted to protect the health and wellbeing of its citizens, which you rightly articulated then as your top priority.
Today, however, I am deeply disappointed by your approach to picking up the pieces of our economy and society, left shattered by the impact of the global pandemic, and exacerbated by the longer-term dysfunction of Nevada’s political economy. Our state--overdependent on gaming taxes and regressive sales taxes--appears to have learned little from the 2008 recession. While earlier generations of political leadership bear responsibility for not having reconstructed our state’s political economy sooner to make it fit for the challenges of the twenty-first century, you are failing in your current responsibility to act decisively and offer leadership where others have fallen short in the past.
The current proposals for the special legislative session involving sweeping budget cuts to education, health, and human services to make up the budget shortfalls created by the pandemic’s impact represent a calculated decision to shirk that responsibility. They instead ensure that the people least well prepared to do so bear the greatest burdens. These are precisely the areas that should be protected from budget cuts occurring in the midst of a public health and economic crisis that already inflicts the greatest harm on the most vulnerable in society: the young, the old, the sick, the poor, and the precarious. As was proven during the recession, harsh austerity measures inflict long-term harm on our social fabric and the communities and individuals whose lives comprise that fabric.
Moreover, current proposals for the special legislative session depart from the deeply flawed premise that budget cuts are the only possible solution for a revenue shortfall. The profound lack of moral imagination and political will underpinning such an approach is reprehensible. And all the more so because we live in a state in which so many possess so much wealth. I recognize that there are significant barriers to overcome in overhauling the state’s political economy which was built for another era and another set of interests, but surely it ought to be incumbent on the state’s chief executive to begin that process and to do so by offering leadership.
It is time to turn the page on the narrative Nevada created for itself as a low-tax, poor-public service state. Working people here want more for themselves and for their children, and increasingly recognize that shared efforts to build a more fair and prosperous society require investment. Nevada could and should join other states in raising revenue through a state income tax. Our state’s wealthiest residents should of course pay the most, but I and other members of the middle class should also be asked to contribute more out of a recognition that many of us can afford to do so and that all of us will benefit from such collective investment.
The prosperous and overmighty mining industry remains bizarrely protected from contributing a fair share of its wealth to the common good, something you and legislators could begin to address through initiating constitutional reform. I have seen concerned citizens, civil society groups, and public policy thinkers contribute a host of ideas in the past weeks upon which you and legislators could draw.
Your rejoinder, that you might consider a tax increase if it magically fell out of the sky wrapped up in red ribbon and hit you on the head, is an insult to Nevadans looking for serious leadership. Your repeated whining that raising taxes wouldn’t be “easy” misses what leadership is about. The fact that revenue from increased mining taxes wouldn’t roll in immediately is not a reason to avoid beginning the process of requiring that powerful and wealthy industry to pay its fair share. And saying you don’t think something is possible, or that you’re not going to take the initiative to begin a process is a curious hand to play in opening negotiations over a process that would undoubtedly be challenging. It is hardly one designed to generate good results.
Nevadans understand that you don’t possess a magic wand with which you can unilaterally enact these changes, nor is that what we are asking of you. But leadership involves having a point of view and advocating for a particular outcome tied to that outlook. You are currently behaving as though you are a spectator to the political process, commenting on the likelihood of things coming to pass, rather than a leading participant who has a significant ability to determine the outcome.
Moments of crisis--political, social, or economic--often highlight in the starkest possible terms already existing and intolerable inequalities, inadequacies, and structures. This crisis has brought many members of our community to its knees. It would be a stain on your legacy and leadership if you did not respond to the depth of this crisis and the underlying factors it has once again revealed, and seek to rebuild the state in a way that will shield its residents from future crises, invest in their education, enhance their life opportunities, care for those who are ill, and fund social services dedicated to the general wellbeing. We need deeper and more substantial collective investment rather than austerity.
I enthusiastically supported your general election campaign in 2018 against your dangerous opponent. But I will admit that I did not support you during the primary precisely because I feared that you lacked the vision and leadership to successfully address both the state’s chronic needs and crises like this one that are bound to affect our society and economy from time to time. I was impressed by your leadership in guiding Nevada through the early stages of the pandemic. I urge you to prove me wrong now and to give Nevadans the leadership they need and deserve. If “home means Nevada,” and if homes are made up of families, let’s start acting like a family that takes care of all of its members all of the time.
Sincerely,
Jeff Schauer
