Longtime Nevadans don't need to be reminded of the numbers to know about the growth.
Fourteen years ago, about 1.2 million people lived in Nevada, about two-thirds of that in Clark County. Last year, nearly 2.3 million called the Silver State home, 1.6 million of whom live in Las Vegas.
That's 66 percent growth—growth that has overwhelmed our small city's services with a big-city's needs.
The excitement and energy of our city has overshadowed the problems the massive growth has caused, at least in the eyes of the million-plus people who have moved to Southern Nevada. After all, dozens still wait on lists for new homes, and dozens more engage in bidding wars for older houses that just a year ago were stagnant in the market. Even more people are being forced to find other places to call home after losing their apartment to the exploding condo market. It kind of reminds everyone of ... California.
You know, the place most of the newcomers moved here to escape? The land of clogged roads, choked social programs, struggling schools and depressed people? The place with a tax burden so ridiculous that even a modest proposal for a new source of state income is met with fierce resistance?
Californians whine about taxes, and it seems fair that they do. After all, they have some of the highest gas taxes in the nation. California's sales tax is higher than Nevada's. Californians pay an income tax. Yet their government's still broke.
But look to the ground California is built on. California's property taxes are low, thanks to a property-tax freeze instituted nearly 30 years ago when the Golden State went through the same boom Las Vegas is seeing now. Californians were worried about losing their houses to higher property-tax rates, and they instituted a bona fide tax revolution—they froze property taxes for as long as they owned the same house.
In fact, California's tax burden isn't that high, despite all the taxes we hear of as the masses flock across the border at Primm. According to the Tax Foundation, California's right in the middle of the pack when it comes to tax "burden," 26th of the 50 states at 9.8 percent of the citizenry's annual income.
Nevada ranked 30th, at 9.7 percent. That's actually fairly good, considering Nevadans aren't saddled with an income tax and our gas and sales taxes are moderate.
Although what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what happens in California usually comes to Nevada. So it is with the property tax "crisis." People's home values are skyrocketing. Their taxes are going up, too. Oh, the price you pay for having a more valuable house!
Some propose a California-style tax cap to keep taxes low so that nobody would be priced out of their home. Others have proposed a fixed cap on tax growth, such as 6 percent per year.
This limits the state's income at a time when the state needs all the income it can get to catch up with services. After all, it's the people who are barely getting by and are struggling to pay these rising property taxes who can probably most benefit from the services the state's struggling to offer, like prescription drug benefits for seniors on fixed incomes, parks and community services for families just getting started or career education classes for trade workers looking to move up in the world.
So rather than cap everyone's property at 6 percent, why not set a cap at 66 percent, Nevada's 10-year growth rate? Every decade, reevaluate the cap rate, based on the growth of the previous 10 years. This would help limit the growth of government based on the growth of the state, while still providing for the state when Nevada is most at need.
For those struggling to pay their property taxes, what's to say a simple exemption can't be offered? Give the 6 percent cap to those who need the 6 percent cap—don't give the benefit to people or businesses who have no problem getting by and would have no shame selling their home for the huge profit they're getting from the rising property values.
After all, we don't want to be like California—income tax, upset people, citizens flocking to the next state up the road. Nevada's always been good at doing things its own way—let's start by not doing things in a way that's been tried and flopped.