Tesla bill starts coming due

Reuters reported that Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada executive Mike Kazmierski recently had “good news to report to the 400 local businesspeople who had gathered to hear him speak at Reno's Atlantis Casino ballroom in January. During 2014, 34 companies had relocated to the area. Nearly 4,200 jobs were created, bringing unemployment down to 6.4 percent, a big drop from 2011's high of 14.2 percent.”

What the news service failed to report is that Kazmierski has also called for Nevada's low income citizens to pick up the tab for the cost of this boom by raising the sales tax—again—for 10 years.

“Our immediate need is four new elementary or middle schools and half of a high school,” Kazmierski wrote in the Reno Gazette-Journal on Feb. 18. “In the next 10 years, we need another 10 schools, and none of this funding is in the school funding proposal being considered by the Legislature! So we are looking at approximately 400 more portable classrooms at a cost in excess of $60 million, and there is no funding in the budget for portable classrooms, either!”

Kazmierski then called for a half-cent hike in the sales tax for 10 years.

Sales taxes impose a heavier burden on low-income residents. Since a 2 cent state sales tax was created in 1955, it has risen to 6.85 percent—one of the highest state rates in the nation—with county sales taxes supplementing that at an average rate of 1.08 percent per county.

Washoe County is still carrying a sales tax hike to pay off the casino industry's project lowering the railroad tracks through Reno.