Re-elect Kelvin Atkinson - Assembly District 17

This is another in my periodic series of email newsletters to provide updates on legislative activities and useful information on available services or opportunities for you to get involved in our community. Click here to view the newsletter.

Why Are These Options Needed?
•Nevada has the worst budget shortfall in the nation at 54%. We cannot close this budget hole by cuts alone.
•We have already made more than a billion dollars in cuts over the past two years. While additional cuts this legislative session are necessary, we cannot cut funding for education and other essential services in half.
•We cannot accept the governor’s proposed level of cuts to K-12 education, which would decimate an already struggling public school system with teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, and a jeopardized ability to attract and keep the very best teachers.
•We cannot accept the governor’s proposed level of cuts to our higher education system, which has been severely cut over the last two years.  Deep cuts could mean spikes in tuition that would put attending out of reach for many Nevada students, elimination of classes and whole programs, or even closing of entire campuses.
•Nevada already ranks at or near the bottom on all national rankings on education. Severe cuts will make those rankings even worse.
•Education is key to our state’s economic recovery and our ability to attract new industries and jobs to Nevada.
•The governor’s proposed budget creates a billion dollar hole in our budget for the next biennium. His budget takes money from voter approved funds to repair old schools.

Why These Options?

•This is real reform of our tax system—making it fairer and more stable, while producing badly needed revenue for education and other essential services.
•Our economy has changed dramatically, but our tax system has not changed to reflect those changes. We now have a service-based economy rather than a goods/manufacturing-based economy.
•We can no longer put band-aids on our failing tax system, where we are back every two years needing to make severe cuts to essential services.
•The transaction tax on services—at a very modest rate (1%)—will allow us to reduce the sales tax on goods.
•The margin tax enables us to phase out the modified business tax on payrolls; it exempts the first million dollars of revenue to help small businesses; it provides big businesses options for calculating the tax to best meet their needs, and it is easy to implement.
•The margin tax shifts our tax burden from middle class taxpayers and small businesses to big corporations, many of which are out-of-state, that are currently not paying their share.
Our Goals for Our State

•Protecting essential services such as education, public safety, and health care
•Improving accountability for how every tax dollar is spent
•Reforming the way our state operates to be more transparent, open and efficient
•Reforming our tax system to be fairer and more stable and to raise needed revenue for essential state services
•Reforming K-12 and higher education, our budget process, our public employee retirement system, and state spending on programs and personnel