Word from Texas: Margin tax is a work in progress, not simple, not meeting projections, likely headed for major reform

The Texas business tax that’s serving as the model for Nevada’s legislative Democrats isn’t getting rave reviews in the state where it originated, according to sources in the Texas business community, who say the margin tax is roundly disliked, and will probably get an interim study, and subsequent reform or repeal in the 2013 Texas legislative session. Read the story at Nevada News Channel

The award for the most succinct statement by a politician goes to — State Senator Greg Brower, who says “yes” to CD2

A text at lunchtime Friday from Vegas PBS producer Stacy: “Hey… just checking to see if brower is in the cd2 race???”  Followed by: “Just checking cause the rj and gazette just flashed he announced he’s running.”

The reliability of recent information about the race to replace Congressman Dean Heller has been mixed. With no formal announcement in the mailbox,  direct confirmation was in order.

In the hallway outside the Senate chamber, the question was asked, and the answer was, in a word, “yes.”

Asked to expand on his one-word statement, Brower said, “I think I’ll leave it at that,” and breezed right past.

Is Greg Brower the Gary Cooper of Nevada politics? Is there more to Brower’s decision to try to leave the state senate seat he just filled? Is it, in the age of texts and Twitter, a brazen act to put a microphone in the face of a politician and request actual confirmation? The answers to these and other questions are — not all that important, apparently.

That is all.

The customer is always right… but generally left out of the lawmaking loop

Joe and Jane Voter rarely show up at the legislature to speak for themselves. Folklore from sessions gone by says there were  lawmakers who adamantly did not want to see or hear from Joe and Jane, and held power like a hammer over the heads of lobbyists who might have considered packing a hearing room with citizens.

This week, in a rarely-exercised act of self-determination, Joe and Jane got a chance  to kill a bill, without setting foot in  Carson City.

Senate Bill 203 would have changed the status of over-the-counter cold and sinus medicine, requiring  a prescription for drugs like Sudafed.

The objective: keep the drug away from folks who would use it to manufacture methamphetamines. Law enforcement estimates between one and two percent of the drug store purchases end up in the meth lab.

Joe and Jane Voter apparently didn’t care for the proposal, which would require them to drag their allergic brood to the doctor’s office on a school day, and shell out the requisite co-payments in order to then proceed to the grocery store and get a box of decongestant.  That was the scenario painted in a radio spot that ran with relentless frequency over the last couple of weeks.  The spot was paid for by an alliance of drug makers who were fighting the bill. It urged a phone call to legislators protesting Senate Bill 203.

Word to the business lobby: What took you so long to realize that the consumer is your natural ally?  It doesn’t take thousands of dollars worth of media to call the consumer to action. A simple op-ed piece or talk show appearance is sufficient to notify the people who really have something at stake. It’s a head scratcher, but rarely are Joe and Jane Voter actively brought into the loop on issues that affect them in the marketplace.

The radio campaign was executed by a national organization, not by any Nevada group, although the Retail Association got the credit for stirring opposition too strong to overcome.

Ironically, the people who killed this bill – Joe and Jane Voter — are largely unaware that they averted an equally undesirable alternative. The drug industry is also paying for a cloud-based decongestant user database — linked in a growing number of states — that logs purchases, along with personally identifying information of every stuffy-nosed citizen who buys a box.  Law enforcement has complete access, any time. Had SB 203 gone forward, this would have been the inevitable compromise.

By the way, Sudafed and its sister drugs are already tightly controlled at the retail level, having been placed out of reach of the runny-nosed customer in 2006. Currently it’s necessary to sign a log and provide identification in order to get sinus relief, but the information stays in the store.

Supporters say prevailing wage overhaul lowers costs, levels playing field; unions come out blasting

A proposed overhaul of the state’s prevailing wage law drew protest on Monday from union representatives who said it will place Nevada’s construction workers in a “race to the bottom,” depriving them of a suitable living. But supporters claim the bill corrects rules that drive up building costs and put non-union contractors at a disadvantage. Story at Nevada Newschannel

Budget back-and-forth: Horsford serves, Sandoval returns, Horsford smashes back…

Senate Democrats are engaged in an informational ping-pong match with Governor Brian Sandoval, both sides struggling to sell philosophies with numbers. Only an accountant could truly enjoy the numerical details, but as political spectator sport, it’s riveting. Charts, graphs, political role-playing and promises of tax discussions in the coming weeks. Read more at Nevada News Channel.

Big Brother crawls up your nose

The state’s war on cold medicine continues, driven by the federal effort to curb its use as an ingredient in methamphetamine.

You, the stuffy-nosed, desert-dwelling Nevadan, should consider the following choice that’s currently before your legislature. Would you like Sudafed and similar medicines to be classified as prescription drugs, requiring a visit to the doctor before you can get them?  Or would you prefer your Sudafed purchases were monitored by a company that logs you in an online database, and rats on you when you turn up at a different drug store to buy more, because your kid took yours, or your briefcase was stolen, or you left town without it?

A former law enforcement officer who now works with drug makers demonstrated the tracking system yesterday in Carson City.  He estimated that between one and two percent of pseudoephedrine purchases end up in a meth lab. The tracking scheme is the drug industry solution. A consortium of pharmaceutical companies picks up the tab when retail pharmacies are persuaded to participate in the system. The industry closes the deal by seeking a state mandate on the pharmacies.

Then they work with law enforcement, turning over purchase records on demand, exposing the entire law-abiding population of cold and sinus sufferers to police scrutiny, in order to identify the one percent who might be mixing up a batch of meth.

The tracking system puts your personal identifying information in a web-based document (that’s name, driver’s license, date of birth, address, and frequency of purchase). It’s a juicy target for identity thieves. Ironically, it’s not protected by HIPAA, since the drugs – at least for the moment — are not prescription drugs.  The records follow you from store-to-store and state-to-state. Currently, the individual pharmacies must keep a record of your cold medicine purchases. It remains in-store, although still available to the police.

The legislature will shortly consider reclassifying the medicine, harmless when used as directed on the package, as a prescription drug. Chief cheerleader for the prescription-only bill is the district attorney of Carson City.  The industry will counter with a cost-free proposal to track, setting up an either-or proposition. Doing nothing, most likely, will not be an option. (See SB 203.)

Effective tax director caught in political crossfire, defenders say — an early casualty of a battle yet to heat up

The sudden retirement of Executive Director Dino DiCianno from the Department of Taxation is a severe blow to the state’s revenue collection arm, according to sources familiar with the operation of the department, and an illustration that knock-down-drag-out politics is alive and well in Carson City, despite rhetoric about civility in a declared atmosphere of bipartisanship.  Read more at Nevada News Channel.

State budget proposes to cut eyeglasses for seniors, while donated eyeglasses are sent elsewhere – tort reform, anyone?

Until now, it seemed silly, but not tragic.  Thousands of pairs of used eyeglasses collected in Nevada for charitable purposes end up perched on the noses of needy recipients in other countries. None of the donated specs are distributed in Nevada.

Now the state is facing Health and Human Services budget cuts that could eliminate prescription glasses to seniors, and this is no longer a merely unfortunate situation.  It’s enough to make you cry.

“There is a central collection warehouse right here in Reno,” Dr. Troy Humphreys told the Reasonable Reporter.  Humphreys is an optometrist, and a member of the Lions Club, a service organization long devoted to the needs of the visually impaired. The Lions’ ranks include guide dog trainers and many optometrists who volunteer examination services. But the docs don’t dispense the used glasses.

“All glasses are organized and sent to Vallejo (California), to be catalogued for Lions in Sight mission trips,”  Humphreys wrote in an email, referring to good works abroad by the Lions International organization.

Here at home, used glasses could be matched so that prescriptions are close, but probably not precisely corrective to  the eyesight of the pro bono patients.  But, Troy said,  a car accident or a tumble down the stairs could expose the volunteer optometrist to a lawsuit. So the patients don’t receive the glasses because of the potential legal liability.

It’s all the more unfortunate, Troy said, because from a dollars-and-cents  standpoint, helping seniors see clearly averts accidents, and saves healthcare money on the other end.  Troy cites a CDC study documenting medical expenses attributable to seniors with fractured bones, or worse, because they didn’t see obstacles or couldn’t gauge proximity to dangerous objects.

In the Gazette Journal’s Sunday piece on the state budget, Senator Sheila Leslie said the budget cut will affect 7,500 people whose eyeglasses are currently picked up by the state.

“We can pay for the examinations, but not for the eyeglasses,”  Leslie told the RGJ. Leslie sits on the joint Senate and Assembly committee that’s been reviewing the Health and Human Services budget.

If the state is going to cut off money for eyeglasses, this is a great opportunity to discuss tort reform, said Humphreys.  The Lions would love to see the glasses going to Nevadans, but doctors have to take measures all day long to protect themselves legally, and this is just one example, he said.

Cyberbullies everywhere, breathe a sigh of relief! If SCOTUS gives a pass to the Westboro Baptists, snotty tweets are a no-brainer.

Thank God — the real God, not the unfathomable deity who watches over the Westboro Baptist Church  — that the First Amendment falls hard.  The Supreme Court of the United States, as it occasionally must, has vindicated our most blessed right,  which is the right to express ignorant, repulsive, and contemptible ideas in public, even when it hurts someone’s feelings.

First Amendment absolutism requires defense of creepy lunatics like the Westboro Baptists and sociopaths like Julian Assange.  They are, in fact, the most critical cogs in the free speech wheel, and defend them we must, like them or not. (Absolutism is the Reasonable Reporter’s position.  You need not, of course, be an absolutist to appreciate the decision.)

We can only hope that the so-called “cyberbullies” are next to have their rights upheld.  Most cyberbully laws seem almost deliberately heedless of the First Amendment, overly broad, and failing to distinguish between authentic threats and mere taunts causing emotional distress (the initial cause of action in Snyder v. Phelps).

Long live the eight Supreme Court Justices who honored the document they’re sworn to defend, and long live nasty people whose unacceptable speech requires protection.  Their protection is protection for all of us.

Nevada’s long, uphill push for recovery: public works, prevailing wage, and it’s not a union versus non-union thing. Or is it?

The union and non-union sectors have so far been best model of civility in the hallways and hearing rooms of the Nevada legislature, presenting a unified front in the service of their respective workers, who are suffering 60 percent unemployment.  But deep political differences remain, with large practical implications in a construction market shrunk beyond recognition. Read the story at Nevada News Channel