Nevadans for Fair
Mining Taxes
THANK YOU !
It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today to inform you that the Nevada Fair Mining Tax initiative will not meet the required 97,000 valid signatures for this year’s ballot. Thanks to hundreds of volunteers like you, we obtained almost enough signatures to qualify the initiative.
It is clear the people would have voted for the initiative and commanded mining to help solve Nevada’s catastrophic budget crisis. We have much to show for your efforts since the kickoff five months ago:
• Nearly 400 new volunteers worked to gather more than 66,000 signatures, and we talked to more than 75 civic organizations about the unfair nature of not adequately taxing Nevada’s most lucrative and under-taxed industry.
• Thanks to our pro bono legal defense team, we defeated the mining industry’s attempts in court to tell Nevadans they could not change the Constitution to remove special protections against taxing the mining industry.
• Taxing mining is now on the table as the first revenue choice of Nevada voters. We faced very significant challenges, each one with the potential to stop our effort. We overcame most of these. But combined, they were too high a hurdle for us to cross.
The number of signatures required, 97,000-based on voter turn-out in 2008, was unprecedented. Additionally, the mining industry and other anti-initiative forces succeeded in the last legislative session in adding complicated hurdles to the signature-gathering process. As we were up and running and had already collected12,000 signatures, the mining industry launched a legal and public relations assault, dragging us into District Court and forcing us to start over. When the moneyed interests lost on other matters at the District Court, the industry appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, which created further delays, additional costs and uncertainty.
In addition to the greatest challenges and the shortest of time frames, we were fighting perhaps the most formidable foe in Nevada: multinational mining corporations worth tens of billions of dollars. Spending endless cash on lawyers was nothing to them if it meant holding on to millions in additional profits each year. Then, the Las Vegas Review Journal dragged us into federal court with a nuisance suit, which further sapped funding and valuable time, and greatly assisted the mining industry’s efforts to undermine our work.
Like you, the supporters of fair tax reform, we at PLAN knew that this effort would not be easy. But it is absolutely necessary. The more economic uncertainty we have in the world, the higher the price and profits for gold– profits that are ploughed back into the political process. We don’t have the billions of the multi-national corporations, but we have something far more important: the backing of the people of Nevada. You know that we will never give up. We will take this fight to the 2011 Legislature so that mining’s mercenaries will not shut down debate and evade paying their fair share.
Foreign-owned gold mining corporations haul billions upon billions of dollars in profits from Nevada lands every year, while Nevada goes broke. We and others have tried approaching mining in a reasonable manner asking they step up and do what is right by the state. The answer has always been no. Big corporate mining interests are too obsessed with protecting their profits to care about the long-term health of our state. They have turned a blind eye to our children’s education needs, the special care that our elderly citizens need, and numerous other needs which would help lift us up out of our status of being "last" in myriad areas compared to other states.
We have never advocated that mining be the only source of expanding and stabilizing our tax base so Nevada is not a "failed state". We asked only that they contribute a reasonable sum yearly, which would fluctuate based upon their profits and costs. No one proposed destroying Nevada mining or employment opportunities. No other industry enjoys the level of exemptions, write-offs and sweetheart deals that mining does.
The industry is beginning to garner the reputation of being a bully. Only recently, they marched onto a rancher's land in search of gold, and have filed for eminent domain to take his property for mining. This is an outrage. Like you, we went into this expecting to win. As William Carlos Williams said, “No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since the world it opens is always a place formerly unsuspected.”
Let’s use the army we have trained and the public awareness and indignation we have generated to retool, rebuild and come out fighting harder than ever before. We are deeply grateful to all of you for your support and your hard work. We thank our allies in conservation, labor, education, the LGBTQ communities, senior organizations and human services for their financial and moral support.
Our state is in extreme peril. This campaign has exposed the disgusting truth that well-heeled mercenaries in high-powered law and lobbying firms have as their biggest priority: Ensuring that taxes are as low as possible for only their big business and foreign mining clients. They have a huge stake in ensuring that “Nevada, Inc.” remains their own piggy bank of workers and resources to exploit. Our next steps are clear: Ensure mining pays a reasonable amount to plug the $3 billion hole in the next Legislative session. Please continue to be a part of the action! Here are three ways to stay involved:
• Join our Advocacy Action Network by clicking here to be kept abreast of actions at the Legislature this session.
• Donate to PLAN. Click here to send your tax-deductible contribution today!
• Watch for PLAN’s emerging 501(c)(4), PLAN Action, which will be kicked off this fall. This will allow us to more effectively engage in the political process to shape the mining and tax debates in Carson City.
Thanks again for your help,
Bob Fulkerson
On behalf of PLAN and Nevadans For Fair Mining Taxes
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