Former Reno Assemblywoman Sharron Angle announced via the Review-Journal today that she will wage an initiative campaign against Nevada’s teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers through a campaign designed to enlist property owners in destroying their own quality of life.
Angle, known during her time in Carson City as a government-hating ideologue, refused to reveal the source of a $200,000 donation that will underwrite her campaign, which on the surface seems far-fetched. After all, who would be a willing party in the destruction of his own home state?
But Angle, who ran for Congress last year and narrowly lost to … a Carson City man who hasn’t been seen since Election Day … has a plan: By promising to reduce already-capped property tax rates — and by repeatedly refusing to acknowledge that property taxes pay for some of the key ingredients in Nevada’s attempt at taming the western frontier with a dose of civilization — she might be able to convince enough people to royally screw themselves and their posterity.
According to the R-J’s report, Angle’s initiative would amend the state constitution to put a cap on property taxes by identifying an arbitrary date in the past and then mandating property values be rolled back to 1 percent of the property’s value on that long-ago date. Thereafter, they could rise at no more than 2 percent per year.
The effects of this initiative are obvious: While homeowners and commercial property owners would see a reduction in their home values, services underwritten by those taxes would also take a hit.
For example, Metro Police officers and local firefighters would see a reduction in revenue to pay for crime-fighting and fire-dousing activities. University Medical Center, the county’s only Level 1 trauma center that cares for car-accident and gunshot victims, among other patients, would see similar reductions. The already-beleaguered Clark County School District would see a cut in the rate of its income growth, which certainly will not help with attracting quality teachers to the district. Public libraries, parks and the Clark County Health District would be affected, as well, as would voter-approved property tax overrides to pay for local needs.
"It’s the same thing we’ve always pursued," Angle told the R-J. "We want stable, predictable property taxes. Our measure will look not different than it has before."
Indeed, Angle has waged a crusade against Nevadans of all stripes before. No explanation for her naked, undisguised hatred for her fellow citizens appeared in the story today, so any speculation on our part as to why she wants to destroy institutions like law enforcement, education and health care would simply be guessing. (One idea: Republicans like Angle hate public institutions but tend to love their privatized-but-often-corrupt counterparts run by businesses. Perhaps this is the first step in a campaign to run Nevada as the largest serfdom since feudalism went out of vogue in the Fourteenth Century.)
Thankfully, Nevada’s constitution (perhaps anticipating an age of mendatious nihilistic, misanthropes) sets a high bar for amendment: Petitioners must collect signatures equal to the amount of 10 percent of the voters who voted in the last general election, and only then can the measure go on the ballot. It must be approved twice before it becomes part of the constitution, and thereafter, it can only be changed with another vote of the people.
One last thing, however: Fairness demands that we score one point in Angle’s favor. She maintains that the Legislature’s creation in 2005 of property tax caps of 3 percent for residential property and 8 percent for commercial property is a violation of the state constitution’s requirement that taxation be "uniform and equal." She’s right about that. The only reason it hasn’t been struck down is that nobody wants to be the dick who challenged the law and caused property taxes to go up for everybody.
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