Casinos again challenge teachers' union on gaming tax

The Nevada Resort Association went back to court Tuesday with briefs arguing the latest version of the teachers' union constitutional amendment to raise casino taxes is still legally defective.

According to the NRA brief, the new version of the initiative petition commits the same violations of law as the original version.

But the complaint also charges that the way that new money would be distributed among the counties shortchanges every school district in the state except Clark.

Current public school funding is provided through a formula that provides money per student, equalized across the different counties to adjust for significant differences in their wealth and actual costs. The system is designed to ensure that small and poor districts have the same per-student funding as large and richer districts.

According to NRA's brief, the petition would provide the new money to school districts on a strict per-pupil basis without any attempt at equalization.

The brief presents a chart comparing the two methods of dividing up the $250 million the proposed amendment would have raised this fiscal year.

All Nevada school districts would get more total funding through the plan. But according to that chart, using the strict, per-pupil split of the new money instead of the equalized formula shifts an extra $8.9 million of the new money to Clark.

And every other district in the state gets less of the new money the way the petition is written than it would if the money were divided up using the long-standing Nevada Plan.

Carson school district, for example, would get $4.7 million new money but that is almost $1 million less than it would get through the equalized formula. Lyon would get $5.4 million added cash. It would get more than $7 million if the equalized Nevada Plan formula were used. In Churchill, the $2.5 million in new money would be $3 million.

Washoe, Nevada's second largest school district, would get $37.8 million. That is $121,438 less than using the Nevada Plan. That is a small part of the Washoe budget. By comparison, tiny Storey school district, getting only $236,351 in new money, would lose about the same amount - $120,000.

Douglas, nearly the same size as Carson but comparatively a wealthier district, lost just $27,450 of its $3.9 million in new money under the union plan.

In addition, the brief charges the proposed constitutional amendment still contains more than one subject in violation of state law because it not only raises the gaming tax, it tries to earmark the money for specific uses and to obligate the Legislature to an ever-increasing funding requirement for schools.

The brief especially objects to the attempt to earmark the money for teacher salaries and student achievement, arguing Senior Judge Miriam Shearing ruled the initiative can't earmark funds when she tossed out the first initiative petition earlier this year.

It says since that issue has already been decided, the union "is barred from re-litigating whether the funds from the increased license fee can be earmarked for teachers' salaries and student achievement."

"They've gone back and put an earmark in when the court said no, you can't do that," said Resort Association Director Bill Bible.

The complaint also argues that, because the petition contains several different subjects, the 200-word description of its effect is incomplete and misleading to voters, which would also justify barring it from circulation for signatures.

The brief filed by NRA describes the new version of the petition filed by the Nevada State Education Association as nothing more than a cosmetic rewrite of the original and says it too should be tossed out.

• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.