Clumsily transcribed by Cliff Nellis from a talk Sharron gave on the radio on Saturday November 15, 2003.

A lot of people don’t realize that we were in special session when Governor Guinn sued the legislature to force them to approve the tax increase.

I have been adamant against tax increases. Taxes are very hard on families and businesses. There is no accountability system is built into government and until there is I will not vote for tax increases.

There are 42 members of the State Assembly, a 2/3 majority means they need 28 votes to pass tax increases. The proposed tax increase started at $704 mil and went up to $902 mil and settled at $836 million. That is almost a 35% tax increase in government over a two-year period. We thought that with what happened on Sept 11^th , the economy did not need this. In November they will be interpreting the tax for the unintended consequences. The main one was that casinos are actually banks because they loan money and they got socked with the 2% gross wages paid tax that was just intended for the banking industry.

 They developed a strategy and that was how to get these 15 who were such a nuisance. Their strategy was to get rid of the 15 assemblymen.

 The first tactic was when at the state of the state address the governor called everybody who wouldn’t support the tax increase cowardly and irresponsible and irrelevant (irrelevant scheme) and said they were heartless and compassionate and balancing the budget on the backs of children and senior citizens.

 When we got into session and we studied the state budget and we saw we did not need this increase and were in pretty good shape compared to most states.  Some states like California had huge problems, but we didn’t. This effort to make the 15 legislators irrelevant didn’t work because the people understood it wasn’t balancing the budget on the backs of senior citizens and children. It was going balance the budget by sacrificing private businesses who are the very people we need in this economy to boost it up. It was going to sacrifice families and put more of an onerous burden on those single income families so that Mom would have to go back to work. So we the people started calling in and sending e-mails into the legislature and saying no new taxes.

  I believe that when the private sector does better then tax revenue increases. So instead of trying to burden families and businesses we should be trying to help them prosper.

 The public has become aware that money doesn’t make education better.

I am on the Education Committee. What will really need to do is to help children learn to read by 3^rd grade.

The State Supreme Court basically said that since we were uninformed when we voted for the 2/3 majority amendment then we really didn’t mean to restrict the legislature to the 2/3 majority to raise taxes. That exhibits the elitist attitude our government has exhibited lately. They think that we the people don’t really know how to govern ourselves. Since we are uninformed and uneducated it therefore takes an elite group that really understands to tell us how thing need to be done. That is the idea behind this increasing federal claim that we really need government to take care of us. Our own apathy has bred this elite attitude that has caused us to go into this socialist mindset.

They found out that our State Constitution says we will fund education at a certain level. That level is just one school per district for 6 months.  One school per district (one district per county) is required to be funded. The Constitution’s requirement of one district per county creates a very large district in Clark County that should be split up. The only way we can do that now is perhaps consolidate two or more small counties into one district and then we can divide Clark. Funding for one school per district does not mean that all schools have to be funded by the state. Basically that means that the reason the Court gave (i.e. funding education) has no real basis. The State Supreme Court said we now have a conflict and can’t fund education. The 15 assemblymen said we could and that  we could increase education funding by 30% if the governor could cut back on general government. They responded by completely funding state government and leaving education totally un-funded.

 The spending bill only required a simple majority. 18 voted against that bill. Then they spun it and said we had to fund the budget. So the 15 wanted the governor’s budget to be opened so we could make changes and fund education. Then we said we needed to look at the 58% increase to welfare. There is a lot of welfare fraud and until that is looked into we should not increase welfare. The FBI is investigating our university system, but hey got a 43% increase. They should not get any increases until they show fiscal accountability.

 Governor Guinn limited the special session to discussion on education and taxes. We could not talk about the budget. The Senate side had two bills, one on education and one on taxes. When the bill came to the assembly the two subjects were combined. That was totally unprecedented. Normally the bills come separated. We cried foul. Then there was a legal opinion from the court that said it was okay to combine them. They did that so we couldn’t choose to fund education only and not the rest of the governor’s general budget.

They knew if the education bill was funded separately it would pass and governor’s budget would not.  We voted it down in the 1^st special session because it was not separated out.

 On June 25^th they called a 2^nd special session to ask for the same thing. The minority of legislators was with the majority of the people. That is something we found out when we went back to our districts and talked to people.

Guinn got Attorney General Sandoval to tell the legislature they must vote. On July 1^st. The Nevada Supreme Court got the case and at the prodding of NSEA (Nevada State Education Association) they manufactured a conflict that was not real. The amendment requiring a 2/3^rd majority vote was put in place later than the education provision and should have taken precedent. Legally that is how it always works. The later changes to the Constitution take precedent over previous changes. The Supreme Court ruled that funding of education of education took precedence over the 2/3 amendment. They did not say the 2/3 amendment was unconstitutional, they just ignored it. If they had ruled it unconstitutional we would probably have no recourse, but since they just ignored it they have made the Constitution changeable at the whim of the Court.

I called all around the country to legal experts and they said the Nevada Supreme Court had the final say. Then I called Chapman University and talked to John Eastman. At first he said there was nothing we could do, but then he read the ruling and was surprised by what he saw. He said Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution required that we have the Republican Guarantee. They also violated the 14^th amend which guarantees one man one voted and due process and committed vote dilution.

We got a temporary restraining order to keep the Senate from voting with just a simple majority.

Then John Marvel (from Battle Mountain) said he was going to change his vote to protect the Constitution. He was mistaken because what he did, did nothing to protect it because a precedent had been set by the Court’s ruling. Since a precedent has been set, they can do the same thing next time. In California, Grey Davis, acted right away and sought to invalidate his state’s 2/3 rule. California’s head of the NEA asked Governor Davis to do that, but it never happened because of recall. There are 19 other states that have the 2/3 majority rule. They know this will set a precedent for the U.S. Constitution and make it so judges can just ignore it and decree from the bench. The Teachers Union asked The Nevada Court not to vacate this decision because they want to use it in 2005. Since they didn’t vacate their decision we have a critically important issue that can only be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.