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Both state legislators representing Nye County in Carson City -- Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, and Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon -- voted not to override Gov. Jim Gibbons' veto of the state legislature's budget bill, which includes a $780 million tax increase.

However, both legislators were in the less than one-third minority. The Nevada Assembly voted to override the governor's veto of Senate Bill 429, which contained the tax increases, 29-13 and the Senate by a 17-4 vote, more than the two-thirds majority required.

On a bill to override the governor's veto of Senate Bill 431, authorizing expenditures, McGinness was one of only two senators to vote against the override; Goedhart was one of five assemblymen out of 42 to vote against it.

During a vote on Senate Bill 433, funding state employee salaries, McGinness and two other senators voted against; Goedhart was one of four nay votes in the assembly.

When it came to grabbing property tax revenues from Clark and Washoe counties in Assembly Bill 543, Goedhart and McGinness were opposed with more company, but they still lacked the votes to stop the override. The same was true of the outcome of Assembly Bill 552, changing the sales tax.

The legislature's budget enacted into law proposes an additional .35 percent increase in the sales tax; increasing the annual business license fee from $100 to $200; raising the modified business tax from .63 percent of the payroll to 1.17 percent for companies with more than a $250,000 payroll and increasing hotel room taxes in Clark and Washoe counties. Legislation on the modified business tax, the sales tax and registration fees is supposed to sunset after two years.

Goedhart and McGinness were each one of the two votes in the Senate and Assembly to not override the governor's veto of Assembly Bill 563, funding kindergarten through 12th grade education.

McGinness said he realizes the basic tenets of state government are important, like education, public safety and basic health care. While state employees have taken a cut in the budget, the funding for public education in kindergarten through 12th grade was actually increased 2 to 3 percent, McGinness said. He said grade school and college education funding accounts for 53 percent of the total budget.

The state appropriation to the distributive school account increases from $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2009-2010 to $1.26 billion in fiscal year 2010-11.

"I'm a great supporter of education but I think I'm not sure even a 2 percent increase was called for in this economy," McGinness said.

The governor proposed a 6 percent cut in teacher's salaries in his budget, the legislature trimmed that to 3 percent, he said.

"It's not like I don't support education, but because of the way things work, there was no opportunity for those people who are going to pay that tax to come testify, come tell about the impacts, especially small businesses," McGinness said.

The state could actually lose more revenue from companies that choose not to locate in Nevada due to the increased modified business tax, he said.

"The more payroll you have the more taxes you're going to pay. I just think that's the wrong way to go," McGinness said.

"We're actually raising more taxes this session than we did in 2003 which at that time was the largest tax increase. So here we are in this stagnant economy raising taxes," he said.

Goedhart said the Republican caucus in the legislature came up with suggestions for meaningful reform of the Public Employee Retirement System, the Public Employee Benefit System, the prevailing wage requirements for public works projects and his school voucher bill that would have saved a combined $1 billion per biennium. But those bills never even had a hearing.

"Instead what they said was that either we have to raise taxes or cut essential government services. They refused to make meaningful reform," Goedhart said. "They're kicking the can down the road."

While people have had their salaries slashed, education is still getting a 2.8 percent budget increase, he said.

"There's a lot of frustration because government isn't playing by the same rules they have to play by," Goedhart said. "This state government is going to be the largest state budget ever approved in Nevada's history."

The assemblyman said he did vote for the original education budget passed by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

While the legislature did make some revisions to the state retirement system PERS, Goedhart said it was so minor it was "like buying a new Corvette and getting the sales manager to throw in a free cigarette lighter."

"There's just a lot of fat that still has to be cut. We have to take on these entrenched entitlement interests whether it's big government, unions, entitlement beneficiaries. When we're going to be in this big of a business there can be no sacred cows. We have to have far ranging and meaningful reform in the way government carries out the way it does business," Goedhart said.