Commentary: The People's Republic of Nevada

Threats, intimidation, secrecy, dead-of-night legislating and changing the rules in the middle of the game.

These are the lengths Nevada Democrats have sunk to in their effort to pass a $1 billion tax hike this legislative session. It's not that our government is broke, it's that our government is broken.

For the past four months, legislators have hidden the details of their planned tax hike from the public. It's been hatched in secret meetings or a "core group" of "elite" legislators. And they've been able to get away with it because legislators exempted themselves from the state's Open Meeting law.

On Wednesday, Robert Uithoven " a pro-business lobbyist who is opposed to the proposed job-killing increases in the payroll tax and business license fees " pointed out that members of Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio's law firm had lobbied on the tax bill and, therefore, Raggio should abstain from voting on it.

This was a critical development because Raggio was assumed to be one of the two GOP votes needed to pass the tax hike.

Shortly after Sen. Raggio's conflict became public, the veteran Reno Republican announced on the floor of the Senate that he would be recusing himself from voting on the tax hike. Following that announcement, Uithoven received a call from Senate Republican caucus director Joe Brezny, who proceeded to issue Uithoven the "you'll never work in this town again" threat, for which Brezny should be fired or sued. Preferably, both.

Nevertheless, Raggio's announcement led Democrat Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford to take some very desperate measures.

In what has been nicknamed the "Absolution Resolution," Horsford introduced a measure that, in essence, declared that members of the Legislature with conflicts of interest on the tax hike no longer had any conflicts of interest on the tax hike. Raggio would be back in the game. The resolution passed in both the Democrat-controlled Senate and Assembly.

Apparently, Democrats will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Then, at 2:45 a.m. Thursday morning, Sen. Horsford issued a "call of the house," held senators in the chamber hostage, and directed the sergeant at arms to seek and take into custody three Republican senators " Mark Amodei, Maurice Washington and Mike McGinness " who were missing. Sen. Hardy had to actually sneak out the back door of the Senate chamber just to use the restroom when the sergeant at arms wouldn't let him out the front door.

What kind of banana republic is Sen. Horsford running here? If this keeps up, Nevada's citizens are going to have to start wearing bags over their heads in shame when traveling out-of-state. And I suspect the worst still is yet to come.

- Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government public policy organization.