A number of former high-profile lawmakers are giving Nevada's casino industry is a helping hand. Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Vucanovich and former Nevada Assembly Speaker Joe Dini are working against an initiative petition being circulated by teachers to raise gambling taxes to generate money for public education.
 
The goal: prevent the Nevada State Education Association from getting signatures needed from each of the state's 17 counties. The overall number is 58,628, but signature-gathers must get a certain percentage of each county's voters, according to election experts. 
 
Dini and Vucanovich said they are urging voters, businesses and organizations to sign up as members of Nevadans Against the Tax Grab and to encourage voters to not sign the NSEA petition, and reject the petition circulators when they see them on the streets and in the shopping malls.
 
The Nevada Resort Association and Las Vegas Sands Corp., as part of the effort, have asked the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn a judge's ruling that the pro-tax petition is legal.
 
To qualify the referendum for the November ballot, the teachers' union must gather the signatures by May 20. Voters would then have to vote to pass the initiative this year and again in 2010 for it to become part of the Nevada state Constitution.
 
Under the project, the gambling tax on casinos grossing more than $1 million a month would rise from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent. The teachers say the rate would still be among the lowest casino tax rates in the world. But attorneys for the gaming clubs said the plan amounts to a "massive 44 percent increase."

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