Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Another special session
The natural result of Nevada voters opposing annual legislative gatherings
Hwe go again. The Legislature convened in special session last week, for the 31st time in state history. There are two basic kinds of special sessions: those convened by an urgent public crisis and those called at the end of a regular session to complete work unfinished by deadline.
Oh, and the third kind: those called to give away large sums of public dollars to wealthy private corporations or sports teams.
This time, lawmakers gathered to fill the gaping budget hole created by the business shutdown occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s the worst fiscal downturn ever faced by the state, and it came upon Nevada virtually overnight.
Sudden problems, or even long-festering ones that finally become acute, are among the reasons some give for suggesting that Nevada should finally implement annual sessions of the Legislature, which presently is constitutionally limited to meeting for 120 days every other year.
From statehood in 1864 to 1999, when the 120-day limit went into effect, Nevada got by with just 16 special sessions, an average of one every 8.4 years. But from 1999 to the present, there have been 15 sessions, an average of one every 1.4 years.
Some of those sessions last a single day or just a few hours. Some go much longer. The Great Budget Standoff of 2003 sparked two special sessions, one lasting nine days and another stretching 27 days.
An annual session — even one limited to a couple of months — would relieve the Legislature of the increasingly complicated task of passing a two-year budget premised on the best guess about tax revenues in the next 24 months. But it could also allow the state the opportunity to address challenges that arise in the long 19 months between our current sessions.
Most state legislatures meet annually, in part for that reason. Only Nevada, Montana, North Dakota and Texas have biennial sessions.
Before this special session took on the budget, there was some partisan constitutional wrangling. As Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, introduced special rules that would allow for remote participation and even voting by COVID-19 quarantined lawmakers, Minority Leader James Settelmeyer, R-Minden, objected.
Under the constitution, Settelmeyer said, the Legislature
SEBELIUS
are not. Few seem to be earning the sort of incomes that would allow them to marry, have children, pay off student loan debt, buy a home and purchase a new car.
Historically, the tips of the spears of cultural revolutions are accustomed to comfort. But they grow angry when they realize that they will never become securely comfortable. In today’s high-priced American cities, especially on the globalized coasts, it’s increasingly difficult for recent college graduates to find a job that will allow for upward mobility.
The protesters are especially cognizant that their 20s are nothing like what they believe to have been the salad days of their parents and grandparents — who did not incur much debt, bought affordable homes, had families and were able to save money.
Earlier generations went to college mainly to become educated and develop marketable skills. They weren’t very interested in ethnic and gender “studies” courses, ranting professors and woke administrators. For the students of the 1960s who were, protesting was a side dish to a good investment in an affordable college degree that would pay off later.
But when such pathways are blocked, beware.
The woke but godless, the arrogant but ignorant, the violent but physically unimpressive, the degreed but poorly educated, the broke but acquisitive, the ambitious but stalled — these are history’s ingredients of riot and revolution.