Education initiative creating bottleneck at state Legislature

Thanks to a constitutional amendment backed by Gov. Jim Gibbons and passed by voters, education must come first in the current legislative session -- at least technically.

The Education First initiative, which Gibbons championed as a way to rescue education funding from politics, is in place for the first time, forcing legislators to pass the K-12 budget before any other funding for the upcoming biennium.

But the amendment has created a bottleneck, not a relief, for legislators, for whom education funding remains the biggest poker chip in Carson City, held up until other budgets can be worked out.

"Education still is the bartering chip," Clark County School District lobbyist Joyce Haldeman said wearily. "They (legislators) can't just close the education budget and get it over with. We're the hostage. We're what is used so that people get what they want in other areas."

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, were meeting Monday evening to see if a compromise could be reached. The Democrats would like full-day kindergarten to be universal, while the Republicans believe it should remain limited to certain schools considered at-risk. A compromise could involve an expansion of the program to more, but not all, schools.

If Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans remain deadlocked over education funding, the impasse could prevent the Legislature from finishing business by the June 4 deadline and push lawmakers into a special session because of the time budget bills take to be drafted.

It's not just education funding that's being negotiated -- it's the entire state budget, with education at the center.

The mammoth K-12 education budget centers around the Distributive Schools Account, or DSA, which sets a per-pupil education dollar amount that applies to all students statewide. Portions of local sales and property taxes go toward that amount, and the state General Fund makes up the rest.

The DSA covers schools' operational expenses and is administered by individual school districts.

Haldeman said legislators originally aimed to pass the DSA by itself relatively early in the session, freeing them up to pass other funding items, some of which could be additional education items. All-day kindergarten, special education and class-size reduction funds, for example, come on top of the per-pupil allocation.

But legislators couldn't agree to do that because everything hinges on the fight over education funding.

"Theoretically, the constitutional amendment says you need to pass one or more appropriations to adequately fund education for the next biennium at a reasonable level of growth," said Lorne Malkiewicz, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau. "So, theoretically, you could pass enough to satisfy that requirement, then come back with extra appropriations for education.

"The reason that's not happening is that once that first one (education budget) passed, the people trying to squeeze more money out for education would lose all their leverage. Practically, that's not going to happen."

Because of Education First, he noted, legislators have funded some projects, such as improvements to the Sawyer Building in Las Vegas and the Ely State Prison, only through June 30. To continue funding such projects, a new bill will have to drafted for the next biennium. The next biennium, for which education must be funded first, begins July 1.

Malkiewicz predicted that once a preliminary agreement is reached on education, a "starting gun" will go off, with the rest of the budget bills flooding the pipeline. But it now seems doubtful all those bills can be drafted and passed in the 14 days that remain, according to legislators, lobbyists and other observers of the process.

During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Gibbons' election opponents called Education First merely cosmetic. Republican Lorraine Hunt, one of Gibbons' primary opponents, said it was a "feel-good" proposal that allowed Gibbons to appear to favor education without actually accomplishing anything.

Gibbons' general election opponent, state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, asserted the proposal could even hurt education funding. Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, agreed with that assessment.

"In the end, Education First may actually result in less funding for K-12, because we can't do anything else or make other decisions until we get an agreement on education funding," she said. Once such an agreement is reached, she said, all the other priorities will fight it out for the remaining revenues available, and education will be stuck with whatever was initially negotiated.

Gibbons spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin defended Education First.

"Education needs to be everyone's first priority," she said. "Education First prioritizes the debate. It puts education above all other issues and refocuses the Legislature so they have to address education needs before moving forward with anything else."

The Education First ballot initiative was inspired by the historic acrimony of the 2003 legislative session, during which the education budget was left for last. With other priorities already budgeted, there wasn't enough revenue left for education, allowing legislators to insist that a tax increase was necessary or children wouldn't get taught.

Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, collected signatures in support of an initiative they said would avert a repeat of such a situation. Put on the ballot in 2004, it passed overwhelmingly and was approved by voters again last year. Constitutional amendment initiatives must be passed in two successive elections to take effect in Nevada.

But the amendment has really done nothing to prevent education from being trapped in political negotiations, said analyst Jeremy Aguero, who studies education funding.

"It means they have to close out the education budget first, but that's all it means," he said. "It doesn't have any practical impact on how much money goes to each student. They'll just have to hold the whole budget, not just education," until an education agreement can be reached.

Education advocates say despite the appealing moniker of Education First, Gibbons hasn't put education first at all. They say his proposed budget doesn't significantly raise the baseline for per-pupil funding, which they say is far short of what's needed.

The Clark County Education Association has been sending legislators e-mails entitled "What's Your Number?" in which teachers attempt to bring home the need for more funding overall.

"For us to have gone through all that political rhetoric about education, it sure seems to be under the radar in the Legislature," the association's executive director, John Jasonek, said. He noted that the Legislature has been embroiled in a controversy over "green" building tax breaks, and the governor's most prominent proposal has been a plan to find funding for transportation projects.

"I think Education First is being exposed for what it was meant to be, which is a way for politicians, including the governor, to use education to be something he's not," Jasonek said.

Review-Journal Capital Bureau writer Sean Whaley contributed to this report.