It was a shocking development for many. In the last days of the 2021 legislative session, the politically powerful mining industry agreed to pay more in taxes. And equally extraordinary for the chronically cynical, Nevada lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill whereby every dollar of taxation paid by mining would be devoted to public education. The historic nature of this legislation cannot be underestimated. Assembly Bill 495 pumps more than $500 million in new revenue into Nevada’s public education system. It also creates, for the first time at the state level, a dedicated stream of revenue to fund our schools.

How on earth did this happen?

Not everyone was surprised by what took place in Carson City in the final hours of the session. The members of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA) knew that if our political strategy in Carson City succeeded, it could result in a huge investment in public education. And so it did. The largest investment, as it turned out, in the history of Nevada.

The seeds of what became AB495 were planted by CCEA nearly two years ago. The members of our union voted to increase their own dues in November of 2019 to fund a campaign to gather signatures for ballot questions in 2022. These initiative petitions would bypass a timid, tax-averse legislature and allow voters to directly increase sales and gaming taxes in order to better fund our schools.   

Ballot questions, however, are a fickle and expensive creature. In 2014, for example, the dues of our members were needlessly wasted when the Nevada State Education Association’s ballot question (The Education Initiative) garnered only an embarrassing 20 percent of the vote. CCEA soon thereafter disaffiliated from such incompetence in 2018. Disciplined by experience, the new and independent CCEA sought to instead leverage these ballot questions in such a way that the gaming industry would assist us in convincing legislators during the 2021 session to properly fund public education. 

An effective union must be able to think on its feet in order to take advantage of new opportunities to represent the interests of its members. And so CCEA again decided to leverage ballot questions. This time an initiative to tax mining created by the legislature during last summer’s Special Session would be the target.

As a result of such a strategy, the contours for a deal brokered by CCEA looked promising by the beginning of 2021. CCEA worked directly with the gaming and mining industries, both of whom of course did not want to see potential tax increases on the 2022 ballot. In exchange for removing those initiatives, an alliance was forged.

During the legislative session, CCEA and our new friends worked with lawmakers and the governor to pass new funding for the Pupil Centered Funding Plan. In exchange for securing the votes of at least two Republicans in each house to meet the two-thirds supermajority requirement to enact new taxes, Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson shrewdly offered incentives to GOP lawmakers to seal the deal. The resulting bipartisan compromise dedicated ALL additional mining revenue to K-12 education, amounting to over $315 million in the next biennium budget. At the end of the day, this coordinated effort resulted in the Legislature investing more than $500 million dollars into the base per pupil funding levels. This first step on the road to getting Nevada to the national average in per pupil funding will not soon be forgotten.

Whether one likes it or not, this is how laws are often made. CCEA is pragmatic and bipartisan, navigating the world as it exists while we fight to make things better. Though weary from a difficult school year of distanced learning, our members sent a staggering 90,000 emails over Memorial Day weekend to lawmakers in support of AB495. There is power in a union.

As the 81st session of the Legislature showed, CCEA knows how to throw an elbow when needed and then offer a warm embrace once a historic compromise has been reached. CCEA’s Executive Director, John Vellardita, the architect of our strategy, brilliantly plays political hardball because that is what CCEA’s President, Marie Neisess, and our members demand of him. The days of the teachers’ union from Clark County going cap in hand to Carson City like some impoverished Dickensian character begging for scraps are, in fact, over.

Dan Barber is a Social Studies teacher at Arbor View High School and a member of CCEA’s Executive Board.