If you missed Governor Gibbons’ broadcast last night, you can read the text of the 2010 “State of the State” message here (.pdf) or here (website).

NFA Advisor draws your attention to the Gibbons plan for protecting teachers’ salaries: the Education Gift certificate.

“You can use the gift certificate to donate money to a non-profit organization that will make sure your money is spent ONLY on teachers’ salaries. For those of you who can afford to help our teachers, I encourage you do it.”

Dear Governor, with 140,000 Nevadans already out of work and 90,000 more (including teachers and other public servants) projected to join them over the next 18 months, with a 4.6 percent decline in personal income and a massive decrease in home values, just whom do you suppose can still afford to give charity to teachers?

Well, the Nevada mining industry continues to earn record-breaking high profits. Maybe these multi-national companies will donate money to keep our public education afloat.

The bigger issue here is ideology. Do we believe that funding public education is the privilege of the wealthy who can afford to make charitable donations (and receive federal income tax credits/subsidies) for doing so? Or do we accept that, because we give every citizen the right to vote, funding public education is the obligation of every citizen and that fair taxation, including taxation of multi-state corporations who bring business here with the expectation that we will provide them an educated workforce, represents the cost of providing this public service to ourselves and our posterity?

Clearly, our governor believes that Nevada public education, like playwright Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois, should depend on the kindness of strangers. What a helluva way to raise our children and to make our state more attractive to new businesses.

CNBC’s third annual survey of “America’s Top States for Business ’09″ ranks our state 47th in overall business competitiveness and 49th in education spending and achievement.  In commitment to and success in educating youth and adults, only Mississippi does a poorer job than we do.  Have we become the “Mississippi of the West” again?

Why is higher education so essential to the creation of a strong pro-business climate in any state?  As the authors of CNBC’s survey report explain, “Not only do companies want to draw from an educated pool of workers, they want to offer their employees a great place to raise a family. Higher education institutions offer companies a source to recruit new talent, as well as a partner in research and development.”

How are we going to diversify our economy, bringing new, skilled, and highly paid jobs to Nevada, if we’re about to maim and cripple our higher education institutions with deep and severe state funding budget cuts?