By:  Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President

The last two days (May 19 and 20) the Nevada Senate has worked past midnight to ram-and-jam their way to a tax increase. 

For some reason people might take this whole legislative process as something less than the ideal approach to the way we’d like our representative form of government to work… 

$781 million tax increase packages should be brought out from the closed-door negotiation session for 10 p.m. “Committee Meetings of the Whole”.

When faced with a challenge of a possible conflict of interests – the applied solution solves it all – you change the rules

DISCLOSURE – Because we don’t support the proposed tax increases to fund the budget of increased spending we probably aren’t covered with the protection of having a conflict – so we are disclosing opposition to S.B. 429…although the persons who we represent will likely not be driven out of business any faster than anyone else because of the increased tax burdens being contemplated.

It should also be noted that because we were not involved in the behind-the-closed-door meetings to pre-determine the outcome of the transparent legislative process – we might also be the “outsiders” who shouldn’t be trying to mess things up.

The drama of the legislative process will continue as the clock continues to tick.  It makes you wonder what the night-shift for the rest of the session is going to come up with…