DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

There is reason to believe that the nation is headed into a recession and that Nevada will experience another state budget crisis.

In 1981, just after Nevada Gov. Robert List convinced the legislature to tie state revenues to the health of the economy by shifting from reliance on property taxes to less stable sales taxes, the 1981-83 recession hit.

State government revenues started falling sharply just as demands on government for things like unemployment insurance and other social programs were rising. List had to impose three rounds of cuts on spending as the recession deepened.

In 1992, after several legislatures and Gov. Richard Bryan had avoided reducing the state's reliance on the sales tax, another recession hit. Gov. Robert Miller went through the same routine that List had followed, of reducing state spending in several waves.

These are the hard times, remember, when the public needs government most. List, a Republican conservative, and Miller, a Democratic conservative, justified their slashes in human service programs by chanting the mantra, "Government should operate like a business." When ordinary Nevadans and businesses must cut, they both said, government should do the same.

Bryan considered this nonsense. Government should run a tight ship at all times, he said, but it's when ordinary Nevadans and businesses are hurting that they turn to government for the help they've paid for all along. "When times are tough, business loses customers," Bryan said. "When times are tough, government gains customers, and they are customers who cannot take their business elsewhere."

Nevada may now again be headed into a national recession. High oil prices, declining housing prices, low consumer confidence and a weak dollar have generated wide predictions that the U.S. is headed into a recession. Revenues in Nevada's state government are well below predicted levels. And thanks to the shortsightedness and cowardice of legislators who were unwilling to enact a stable, predictable, and fair tax system, Nevada may again be ill equipped to handle it.

Granted, the problem is not as bad as it once was. The 2003 tax program enacted at Gov. Kenny Guinn's recommendation has made the state much better able to cope with recessions. Paradoxically, Gov. Jim Gibbons - who opposed passage of the Guinn program and now much come up with an initial $285 million in cuts - is now its beneficiary.

But Gibbons' initial steps to deal with declining state revenues during a recession have undercut confidence by businesspeople in his competence. To start, Gibbons appears not to believe in government in the first place. Then, too, as the Las Vegas Review Journal's Erin Neff pointed out, Gibbons "already believes the state is living beyond its means." Gibbons may soon be forced to start the rounds of cuts that List and Miller experienced. But even they never went at it in the way Gibbons has.

In both cases, the governors ranked state agencies according to the necessity of the services they provided. But Gibbons ordered all state agencies to come up with 5 percent cuts, which suggests that his ideological desire to reduce government trumps his responsibility as governor to serve the neediest in hard times. To demand the exact same level of cuts from, say, the Nevada Contractors Board and the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services is preposterous.

Not surprisingly, some governments that are not under the governor's control have refused to produce cuts made in such a meat-ax approach. Clark County and the state higher education system both declined to engage in that kind of an exercise.

Most of the news coverage of these issues has revolved around the prospect of a tax increase, which misses the point of the disputes going on in governance. The issue is not how to avoid cuts in services -- if a recession comes that question will answer itself -- but which services should be cut and by how much. Or to put it another way, should public officials during a recession cut government or help taxpayers?