Legislature should finish budget first

A confluence of factors have made this budget term a particularly difficult one for Douglas County's public schools.

Unlike the county, the school district's budget lives or breathes based on decisions made by the Legislature.

That's too bad, because the math for supporting the schools isn't all that difficult. Every property owner in Nevada pays 75 cents per $100 assessed valuation to support the schools.

In some states, that would mean that some districts, like Douglas, would have more money than others. But we are under the Nevada Plan, under which the state collects the property tax and then divides up the money based on how many students are in each district.

Normally, that means the schools have far more stable budgets, but with Nevada's foreclosure crisis and the 2005 assessed valuation cap, money to support the state's school districts has been a little shaky.

Add to that the Legislature's tendency to tweak the numbers during the session and Douglas County officials have no idea what their budget for the next two years is going to look like.

Under state law, the district must have a preliminary budget ready by April 15 and finalize that budget on the third Wednesday in May.

Nevada legislators are under no such deadline to complete their budget work. The budget is usually the last thing legislators complete when they wrap up the session, sometimes weeks after the district's May 20 budget deadline.

One way to fix this conflict is for lawmakers to give full priority to the budget. That means completing the budget first and saving the feel-good resolutions and wacky laws for the end of the session.