Over the course of the last year, government has demonstrated an appalling inability to provide Nevadans with the resources, tools and services they needed in such a massively disruptive time.

The state’s unconscionable failure to provide unemployment benefits to thousands of workers—forced out of their jobs due to the coronavirus closures—was one of the most glaring examples. So, too, was the Clark County School District’s year-long experimentation with distance learning—an experiment in public education that has left tens of thousands of children struggling to advance academically, with the most disadvantaged children suffering the most.

And now, government lobbyists, unions and insiders are in Carson City pushing to hike taxes as a way to “solve” the challenges faced by government agencies. Increased property tax burdens, higher sales taxes and even authorizations for new local taxes will all be considered in this legislative session—and with constant budget concerns being voiced from every corner of government, it’s not hard to imagine politicians will be tempted to consider the relatively easy path of agreeing to “more revenue.”

Such a knee jerk reaction to boost budgets and tax revenue is not only economically unwise in an economic downturn, it also demonstrates a clear disinterest in addressing the fundamental reasons government has failed so many Nevadans.

For example, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation—the office responsible for processing unemployment claims—didn’t fail spectacularly in their task merely because it was understaffed or lacked necessary technology. After all, if increased demand is an excuse for failure, the system clearly has more pressing structural issues.

In a typically bureaucratic way, the agency lacked both the ability to innovate and the accountability to incentivize the changes needed to keep up in a rapidly evolving environment.

Adjusting this dynamic will require deep reform—not a larger budget. When the “Charter Agency” model was used to address this precise type of bureaucratic failure in Iowa government agencies, it was extraordinarily successful. Such a model allows the Legislature to set broad policy goals for agencies, while specific decisions over the means for achieving those goals are left to the agencies themselves. This empowers the leaders within those departments to innovate and streamline operations, and it ensures that public workers themselves are key drivers in keeping the agency effective and responsive to citizens.

The state’s top-down approach to education faced similar challenges of inflexibility and paralysis last year. For decades, our education system has operated with the belief that a single model of government-delivered education was, and always would be, capable of addressing the needs of students—never mind the fact that it had, even in relatively good times, failed to do so.

This failure was already manifesting in stubbornly low academic outcomes before coronavirus, but it reached new levels the day schools closed their doors during the pandemic.  

The system’s inability to react to the individualized concerns of parents and students was self-evident as a debate raged over when, or if, in-person learning should resume. While each family undoubtedly had their own preference, they were all, nonetheless, subject to the decision of a government agency that was decidedly more in tune with members of the education establishment than the average parent balancing health concerns, job security and in-home learning.

Rethinking the way government provides education will do more to ensure Nevadans receive the quality they deserve than any boost to overall funding. Expanding educational choice, such as Opportunity Scholarships, would give parents more freedom and flexibility to seek alternatives that fit their individual priorities—a freedom that could have saved countless students during the closures of the past year.

Moreover, since educational choice programs cost less per-pupil than traditional public schools, such freedom would have the added benefit of actually lowering educational costs for the state—savings that could be reinvested to ensure the students who remain in traditional school districts have access to the tools necessary for success.

Unfortunately, reforms such as charter agencies and educational choice—along with many others—are deeply unpopular with the government insiders, lobbyists and unions that benefit from increasing budgets and maintaining the status quo. Tackling reforms that would reimagine how government provides critical services to Nevadans requires exceptionally hard work that is wrought with political opposition from powerful government special interests.

And so, as has been the case for decades, much of what we will hear from the Legislature will involve minor tweaks to how government operates and substantial debates over how much more Nevadans “should” pay in taxes for the services that have been failing them.

However, Nevadans deserve a government that is better, not merely one that is more expensive. And that will require bigger ideas coming out of Carson City than we’ve seen in the past — not bigger budgets or tax hikes.

Michael Schaus began his professional career in the financial sector, where he became deeply interested in economic theory and the concept of free markets. Over a decade ago, that interest led him to a career in policy and public commentary—working as a columnist, a political humorist and a conservative talk show host. Today, Michael is director of communications for the Nevada Policy Research Institute and lives with his wife and daughter in Las Vegas.