A class apart
State
tax officials insist they are above the law
By Steven
Miller
BusinessNevada
Following the G-Sting and other recent Nevada scandals, some
in the state’s political establishment are trying to tamp down
suspicions that corruption in the Silver State could be deep
and systemic.
“You’ll notice that you won’t read about the guys at the top
of the [political] game involved in the current [G-Sting]
scandals,” former gubernatorial aide and longtime political
insider Pete Ernaut told a Las Vegas Sun reporter
earlier this month.
It takes world-class audacity to argue that when three of
seven Clark County Commissioners get caught taking payoffs
from a rich skin-joint sleazoid, it’s proof of effective
“self-policing” inside the state’s political establishment.
But that’s the way Ernaut wants it seen.
No wonder he and the establishment’s other R&R operatives get
the big bucks. In the old days the line would simply have
been: “So who are you going to believe—me or your own lying
eyes?”
If
you trust your eyeballs, you might want to use them on a
recent Nevada court decision posted on the
BusinessNevada website. These official findings of a
respected Northern Nevada district court judge suggest that
suspicions about the integrity of state tax agencies are,
indeed, well founded—and have been for decades.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2004 by about a dozen Incline
Village and Crystal Bay property owners. Following years of
difficulties with the Washoe County Assessor’s office and
after exhausting all administrative remedies, they were
legally charging that longtime Assessor Robert W. McGowan
simply ignored Nevada law on the appraisal of properties.
Later that month, the Washoe County Assessor, the county of
Washoe itself, the State of Nevada and the State Board of
Equalization filed response briefs. Then ensued 18 months of
expensive legal jockeying between the privately financed
lawyers for the plaintiffs and the taxpayer-funded legal teams
of all the different state agencies.
Finally, on January 13, District Judge William A. Maddox
issued his findings.
For the State of Nevada’s taxation apparatus, those findings
were devastating. They confirmed some of the worst suspicions
of Washoe County and Silver State taxpayers.
Maddox revealed that systemic and pronounced indifference to
existing Nevada appraisal law was rampant within the Washoe
Assessor’s office, the State Board of Equalization and the
State Department of Taxation.
Each agency, he found, had felt more than entitled to
routinely ignore existing state law and duly promulgated
regulations when Lake Tahoe properties were being appraised.
“The [Washoe County] Assessor’s position,” wrote the judge in
his findings of fact, “is that each individual assessor is
allegedly governed by generally accepted appraisal
methodologies and not Nevada statutes or regulations and that
these methodologies do not have to be consistent as between
assessors as the individual assessors can adopt different
standards for appraisal at any time.
“The State Board [of Equalization]’s position,” Maddox
continued, “is that the State Board may allegedly adopt any
standards, rules, directive, or statements of general
applicability without adhering to the process contemplated in
NRS 233B, even if these newly adopted items are in direct
contravention to existing regulations and statutes.
“The Executive Director of the Department of Taxation’s
position is that the Executive Director can allegedly create
and establish standards of appraisal to determine taxable
value of land in direct contravention to the Commission’s and
State Board’s regulations and rules...”
Maddox was not so gauche as to say so, but the clear
implication of his findings is that Nevada’s property tax
assessment agencies see their real role as simply hammering
taxpayers in behalf of their government masters—regardless of
the provisions of applicable Nevada law.
Serving state and local politicians’ always insatiable
appetite for money is primary. The law itself? That’s of
little importance.
Here is where the continuity with Southern Nevada’s G-Sting
and other scandals can be found. In each instance, Nevada
government officials—whether appointed or elected—have
implicitly defined themselves as a class apart, an elite
anointed by their power. Inherently—if unconsciously—they act
out a belief that their elevation into government entitles
them to prey upon the citizens they are publicly pledged to
serve.
The First District Court’s well-grounded findings—which the
state agencies are appealing to Nevada’s Supreme Court—clearly
characterize more than the 2002-2003 period adjudicated in
this lawsuit.
What they reveal, for all who have eyes to see, is the actual
culture that has become firmly established in Nevada state and
local government—but usually remains well concealed from
public view.
By almost any measure, it qualifies as systemic corruption.
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Steven Miller is editor of BusinessNevada and policy director
for the Nevada Policy Research Institute.
