LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Gov. Joe Lombardo will decide soon on continuing a property tax meant to pay for more than 800 Metro Police officers, after a bill to authorize the extension passed a nearly unanimous Legislature.
Senate Bill 451 would extend for 30 years a property tax measure first approved by Clark County voters in 1996, but which would expire next year if not renewed. It devotes 20 cents per every $100 of assessed value to police.
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Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Clark County, a former gang prosecutor in the Clark County District Attorney's office, sponsored the legislation, and told her colleagues in April that the department could have to make deep cuts in its payroll if the tax extension wasn't approved.
Some Republicans, however, voted against the measure, saying it should go back to the voters for approval.
Assemblywoman Jill Dickman, R-Washoe County, was the lone Republican in the 42-member Assembly to vote against the bill. She was joined by Republican state Sens. Ira Hansen and Lisa Krasner, both R-Washoe County, John Ellison, R-Elko County and Dr. Robin Titus, R-Lyon County.
According to Cannizzaro and fiscal expert Jeremy Aguero, continuing the property tax levy would not increase anyone's taxes in Clark County. But Aguero says, because of the complex operation of property tax abatements enacted in 2005, letting it expire would not lower anyone's taxes, either.
"If the legislation was not to pass, the 20 cents goes away, but the amount of money gets absorbed by those [tax] abatements, so no one's property taxes actually go down," Aguero explained. "The same amount of property taxes are paid because we essentially recapture the amount of the abatement."
Cannizzaro made a similar argument on the floor of the Senate in April, when she challenged her colleagues to vote for the measure.
"It doesn't raise anybody's taxes. Doesn't. Does not raise anybody's taxes," she said. "And, if we don't pass this bill, it's not going to lower anybody's taxes, either. That money will go elsewhere."
The number of officers whose salaries are paid for by the property tax is about one-quarter of the entire 3,100-officer force. Cannizzaro said losing that many officers could require the department to reassign detectives back to patrol, impacting the department's ability to build complex criminal cases.
Aguero said the Legislature could have chosen to send the matter back before voters, but the choice would be where the money should be spent, not whether it should be spent.
"But today, as we sit here, what are the voters going to be voting for?" he said. "Because at the end of the day, that 20 cents is either going to police officers or it's going to go everywhere else.
"The only question before the voters, before local governments and before state legislators and the governor is whether these dollars are going to go to these police officers or whether they're going to go somewhere else."
If Lombardo signs the bill, the tax would continue until July 2057.
