The Memorial Day holiday came and went with lawmakers working Saturday and Monday on proposals involving education, transportation and the budget. But there was little consensus as of May 29 and if resolutions were to occur, they were likely to happen by the end of the week.

Late on May 29 a transportation bill was introduced in the Senate after weeks of discussion.

The legislative session is scheduled to end June 4. Gov. Jim Gibbons could call a special session to address unresolved issues if the logjam continues.

The hours leading up to the last week of the session were filled with proposals and counterproposals - but rarely with the adversaries being in the same room.

A week after announcing a transportation plan to raise $783.7 million by the 2014-15 fiscal year and give the state the leverage to bond $2.5 billion in highway projects, Gibbons came to Southern Nevada to announce that his proposal would be introduced in the Assembly.

"My staff and the Legislative Counsel Bureau are working out the details right now," Gibbons told a joint luncheon of the Latin, Asian and Urban chambers of commerce on May 24.

"The roads you travel on everyday, whether you're going to work or taking your kids to school or going to the store, are congested," he said. "We've outgrown our current infrastructure and this is the result of an increase in population, but it's also an unprecedented growth in tourism. Already it can take hours to get from one end of town to the other. People sit in traffic, you sit in traffic, wasting time, wasting gas, wasting valuable, valuable efforts to get from where you want to be from where you are."

Gibbons told the more than 1,000 people in attendance at Caesars Palace that dealing with growth is a great problem to have and he wants to capitalize on that growth to find the solution.

"Why not take some of the additional revenues, ladies and gentlemen, generated by that new growth and use it to solve the problem that comes from that new growth? To me, this a better solution than making you and me pay higher gas taxes, pay more money to register our cars or whatever new fees are being proposed by those who want to raise taxes."

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority scheduled a special meeting the next day to discuss the transportation plan since $424 million of the revenue generated over the next eight years by the Gibbons plan would be diverted room tax revenue the LVCVA board uses to market the city.

The fate of the room tax revenue is even more critical this year since the LVCVA board earlier in May voted to use the room tax to secure bonds for an $890 million refurbishing of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

LVCVA President and Chief Executive Rossi Ralenkotter said the upgrade and the development of a Metro substation at the Convention Center would have to be canceled if the room tax revenue is diverted. The LVCVA's bond counsel also thinks the diversion could be viewed by bondholders as a violation of the original contract.

Ralenkotter said details of that contract were disclosed in the bond prospectus when the original bond contracts were approved.

Board members pledged to help the governor find a solution to funding transportation, but didn't offer any specifics at the May 25 meeting. Most board members seemed most irritated that the governor had not consulted them directly about the tax revenue diversion plan, although the governor said the idea had been raised in discussions his staff has had with gaming industry leaders, some of whom have executives on the LVCVA board.

"I think it's outrageous that he (Gibbons) goes forward with a plan like this without considering the devastating effect it would have on this authority and the health of our tourism economy," said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who chairs the LVCVA board. "I think it's rude. Certainly our input ... look who we have here ... we have the captains of the ship sitting with us here. We have elected officials who are responsible to our constituents and he didn't even pick up the phone to ask us how we felt about it."

"No business can be sustained with only 1 percent growth," added Tom Jenkin, vice president of the Western Division of Harrah's Entertainment, and a member of the LVCVA board. "Costs are going to go up and there's no way we're going to be able to accomplish some of the goals of the LVCVA with this level of cutting."

"It's not just a tourism issue. It's a complex problem with complex issues requiring a complex solution," said board member Keith Smith, president of Boyd Gaming. "The governor approached only one gaming company that I'm aware of and that makes it a little difficult to solve the problem without more diverse ideas."

Smith was making reference to Gibbons meeting with representatives of Venetian owner Las Vegas Sands, whose executives are philosophically opposed to using room taxes to subsidize marketing and the Convention Center, which completes with the company's Sands Expo Center.

Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins said the governor "painted himself into a corner" with his pledge not to raise taxes.

"But I submit that he's violating his pledge by approaching this position because it's going to put a greater burden on local taxpayers to deliver more visitors here," Collins said. "He (the governor) should come meet with us. The guy's got to get another plan."

Gibbons responded the next day that he was happy that the LVCVA board agreed to help address the problem and that he would be willing to hear new proposals.

"I can accept compromise," Gibbons said. "I cannot, and the people of this state cannot, accept inaction."

Once both sides of the debate made their public stances, supporters and detractors checked in.

Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, whose transportation views are so widely respected that his colleagues named the Las Vegas Beltway in his honor, stood by the governor's plan in a news conference on eminent domain legislation.

Assemblyman Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, the Assembly's minority leader, agreed to introduce the governor's plan as a bill, but only after stating that he felt it had no chance of passage. Early on May 29, he still hadn't introduced it. But the governor's plan did finally surface late May 29. A hearing was scheduled on the legislation, SB 574, on the afternoon of May 30 before a joint meeting of the Senate Committee on Taxation and the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, Sens. John Lee, D-North Las Vegas, and Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, met with representatives from various industries to develop a separate transportation plan diverting 1 percent from an existing rental-car tax, a $20 million annual increase in the diversion of room taxes, a 3 percent increase in the diesel fuel tax and a 20-cent-per-ride tariff on taxicabs to finance roads.

But it was unclear whether the Lee-Nolan plan would be somehow melded into the governor's plan or whether Gibbons would veto legislation over the proposed diesel fuel tax increase, even though it was agreed to by trucking industry advocates.

While the transportation bill was volleyed, lawmakers also couldn't come to grips with funding education and approving the state's $7 billion budget for the coming two fiscal years.

The Republican and Democratic caucuses of both houses took delivery of the budget, a 15 percent increase over the current two-year cycle.

Gibbons has stuck to his guns on cutting the state business tax to 0.63 percent. Under existing legislation, the 0.63 percent rate was scheduled to revert to 0.65 percent, a difference that would result in an estimated $18 million in additional revenue. Gibbons originally wanted lawmakers to cut the rate to 0.62 percent, but said he would be satisfied with the 0.63 percent amount.

With Assembly leaders disappointed that the Gibbons proposal did not include more for education programs, the business tax cut and funding schools suddenly were linked. The Gibbons plan includes $2.3 billion for K-12 education, which fell short of what Assembly Democrats wanted for their plan, which included an all-day kindergarten program.

Constitutionally, education funding must be settled first and Assembly leaders accused Gibbons of holding funds hostage in order to get the business tax decrease agreed upon.