Amusement tax makes farce of Guinn pledge to balance budget fairly

It's a good thing the Legislature is busy in Carson City looking after working people, or those dwelling outside the country club might start to get the wrong idea.

Take one component of Gov. Kenny Guinn's $1.1 billion revenue enhancement package, the so-called amusement tax. The Governor's Task Force on Tax Policy recommended imposing a 6.5 percent tax on tickets to movies, professional sports events, video rentals, concerts and even adult cabarets. At the same time, the committee opposed taxes on country club memberships, rounds of golf, bowling and other activities its members deemed participatory. (Apparently, tax committee members have never visited some of those adult cabarets.)

Just looking out after the health of Average Joes and Josephines by providing a little incentive to get out and shoot 18 at the local links, I guess. Or weight train by swinging a heavy ball down the alley. Big of them, don't you think?

Speaking of big Brunswicks, it took some for the fat-cat tax committee to suggest golfers and bowlers were somehow more deserving of a break than people who take their kids to movies and minor-league ballgames.

Media reports have singled out committee member and avid golfer Brian Greenspun, whose publishing empire includes the Las Vegas Sun and VegasGolfer magazine, but don't blame one person for this craven call. Chairman Guy Hobbs said the rest of the committee should take a bow for this baloney.

At the risk of giving the committee too much credit, I'd like to think its members included this insanely hypocritical exemption as ballast to be thrown overboard for political expediency. The problem with giving them too much credit is, the proposed taxes on tickets to movies and ballgames remain untouched.

It's a good thing no one's taking a shot at the working class here.

I guess that's why you see the well-heeled all over the place at Las Vegas 51s games. Guys are drinking Budweiser with pinky fingers extended from foul pole to foul pole. It's big bosses in the bleachers and Porsches in the parking lot, especially on $1 Beer Night.

The dark comedy in all this is the irrational thought being floated in Carson City that the amusement tax is somehow going to slip in under the unsophisticated public's radar while the media and politicians debate the controversial gross-receipts tax.

Guess what?

Long after the tax debate has come and gone, moms and dads surely will remember those who voted to tax their kids' movie and ballgame tickets. Taxpayers are harried, harassed, and distracted. But they'll remember who made them pay more for tickets to the latest Harry Potter flick or a 51s game.

When Gov. Guinn said in his State of the State address (upping the rate to 7.3 percent) that he refused to balance the budget on the backs of the children, poor and elderly, I wished he had included the working class. That's the farce of pretending the amusement tax is somehow an equitable assessment. It makes little bones about hitting the wage earners hardest.

It's not too late. In early February, the Taxation Committee had a few sharp criticisms of the amusement tax. Sens. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, and Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, were pointedly against the golf exemption.

On Monday, Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said, "I don't care whether you put golf in or not, I'm not going to vote for it."

The amusement tax reeks. The golf and bowling exemptions hamstring the credibility of the tax committee, diminish the legislative debate, and make a mockery of Gov. Guinn's promise not to balance the budget on the backs of the neediest.

One way to help quiet what promises to be a substantial voter discontent is to set a minimum ticket price of $20 before the tax kicks in. That gives relief to working families.

Without that and other substantial changes, legislators who vote for this unamusing tax should be yanked from office like a rotted tooth.

It's not about golf, it's about fairness for Nevada's working families.

More than amusing, it will be downright surprising if they somehow prevail over fat-cat special interest.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesdays in the Nevada Appeal. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.