Gov. Gibbons says state should get bigger tax share

LAS VEGAS - Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons says some taxpayer dollars that go to local governments could be used better by the state, and he hopes the 2009 Legislature will examine the issue.

Gibbons said he has been talking to state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, about tinkering with the formulas that make property taxes the primary base for local government, while the state relies more on sales taxes.

"I think Raggio has the right idea that we need to look at how we allocate revenues," he said Monday. "That should be a study that the Legislature does, how do we allocate state revenues. We ought to look at what share of revenues go to cities and counties."

Gibbons returned several times to the idea over the course of an hour-long interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal's editorial board, saying that giving the state control of a bigger share of tax revenues could mitigate seemingly constant shortfalls.

Since Gibbons presented a budget to the 2007 Legislature, revenue projections have gone down by more than half a billion dollars because of lagging sales tax receipts and other collections.

"Maybe we ought to be looking at the state's contribution to counties and cities," Gibbons said. "As you know, you have a property tax base here in the county that the state doesn't have. You need to look at that allocation once again to see whether or not we can mitigate this constant cyclic affair with the sales tax."

In previous years, expert studies of the state's tax structure have been commissioned. But Gibbons said those studies focused on revenue sources, and he's not interested in raising taxes or changing what kind of taxes exist.

"What we need to study is revenue allocation, so the state isn't going through this tremendous cyclic nature that it's going through now," he said.

Gibbons also predicted a difficult time when the Legislature reconvenes in about a year.

"It's going to be a horrible session simply because everybody's going to be looking at a much smaller pie," he said. "A lot of the special interest groups that are always dependent on getting an increase may not see the same size or level of increases."