Police deal with tax setback

Three months ago, the leaders of the Las Vegas Valley's three largest police forces sat side-by-side in a Carson City hearing room and implored lawmakers to raise the county sales tax again to fund more officers.

With the first half of the sales tax passed in the 2005 legislative session, the agencies had hired more than 600 new cops and brought crime down across Southern Nevada, the top cops told the state Senate Taxation Committee.

Now they wanted the second half of the More Cops tax to continue their crime-fighting success.

The committee members agreed and passed Senate Bill 202 after amending it to split the quarter-cent sales tax increase and delaying collection until mid-2011. But the bill moved to the Senate Finance Committee and died without further action.

"I'm not happy about it," Sheriff Doug Gillespie said. "I don't think we got a fair shake. I would have liked to see it go to a vote" on the Senate floor.

Passage of the bill would have allowed local police departments to start hiring more officers in early 2012. Without it, the agencies must rely on their local governments to fund new police positions.

When the More Cops tax initiative went before county voters in 2004, then-Sheriff Bill Young argued it was necessary because local governments hadn't hired enough officers to keep up with Southern Nevada's explosive population growth.

Voters narrowly approved the half-cent tax increase, and the 2005 Legislature put it into law, but only after cutting it in half and requiring police leaders to show how they were using the money before approving the second half.

Going into this year's session, Gillespie expected the dismal economy to be an obstacle to approval of the second half of the tax, yet he felt splitting and delaying the tax increase would be enough to win passage.

But when state lawmakers raised sales taxes and other levies as part of their plan to plug a $3 billion shortfall in the state budget, the More Cops tax was sacrificed.

"The Legislature thought there was only so much we can put on the taxpayer at one time," said David Kallas, lobbyist for the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which represents the Metropolitan Police Department's roughly 2,500 rank-and-file police officers.

"We were just a victim of circumstance ... but it's a reality we all have to deal with," Kallas said.

State Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, said the police leaders justified the second half of the tax, but lawmakers felt the More Cops sales tax on top of the other tax increases would be "too much to bear" for county residents.

"Metro always knew it was contingent on the kind of sales tax we had to issue," he said.

Even though the More Cops tax initiative was voter-approved, "any vote is not necessarily an ironclad thing, because things change," Coffin said.

He pointed out that if the Legislature passes the tax increase during the 2011 session, the tax collection could begin in mid-2011, just as it would have under the bill that died this year.

"I'm sure it will be enacted," Coffin said. "It's just a matter of when."

Gillespie had argued that the tax was approved by voters, and recent polling by him and the Review-Journal showed strong support for raising the sales tax to pay for more police officers. But the sheriff said he "never really got what I considered to be a level of support" from the legislative leadership.

"I saw folks coming up with reasons not to enable the tax, other than reasons it should be enabled," he said.

Gillespie said he plans on spending more time in Carson City during the 2011 session to lobby for the sales tax with a "more vigorous campaign."

"It's a shame that the sheriff of Clark County has to be up there to push the will of the people. If that's what needs to be done, that's what I'm going to do."

Contact reporter Brian Haynes at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.