Saturday in Carson City

We are winding down to the final hours down here, which means a lot of hurry up and wait time.

The biggest issues remaining are the final four or five vetoed budget bills that need to be overridden by the Senate, the Raggio-Horsford fight on what an interim tax study should look like, the SB 201/RTC-5 veto override, and Barbara Buckley's reserve account for k-12 education.

Apparently, Senators Raggio and Townsend want an override vote on SB 201 to occur before they agree to override the final budget bills.

As for the tax study, Senator Raggio proposed an open-ended study conducted by a private, outside firm. Senator Horsford, on the other hand, wants to put together a commission that will focus on some specific business taxes and a mechanism that will allow these various new taxes to be outlined completely for quick consideration by the 2011 Legislature and quick implementation by the Department of Taxation, etc.

As for the Speaker, the Governor vetoed AB 458, which would set-up a special reserve account for K-12 education. Current practice forces any extra education funding left-over at the end of a biennium to be reverted back to the general fund. This bill would allow that left-over money to stay in a separate account and be utilized specifically for education during budget downturns.

The Chamber testified in strong support of this bill and other bills that set up reserve accounts for such things as higher education.

In a bizarre act that seems to make the perfect the enemy of the good, the Governor vetoed AB 458 because the Legislature ignored his bill that would have set up similar reserve accounts for k-12, higher ed, and health and human services.

While the Chamber supports all of those concepts, it would seem to me that AB 458 is better than current practice, so it should have been signed into law.

Now, back to waiting....