CARSON CITY – Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio said today he’s got no time for “a partisan circus,” but that he’d work to see some of the cuts in Gov. Jim Gibbons’s budget reversed. The state’s longest-serving senator specifically said cuts to higher eduation and health services including the budget wouldn’t stand.

“We’ve got no time at all for all of these extraneous matters,” Raggio said. “If this gets into a partisan circus or gets into pushing somebody’s political campaign, they’re going to lose people like me.”

Raggio specifically said all options — including taxes — are on the table, but that for him, taxes would be a last resort. “I’m not going to be dictated to by one sector or another.” And by that, Raggio meant neither Republicans nor Democrats, since Republicans have criticized him for not signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to never raise taxes. (”I think we do a disservice to our constituents when we sign those kind of pledges. Why say you’re going to have a closed mind?” he asked.)

Critics of the process don’t understand that government cannot necessarily cut budgets the way the private sector can. Cutting prisons or health care or schools too much would draw lawsuits that could likely force the state to spend money, even money it doesn’t have. And certain state services are more necessary than ever in a bad economy, including health care.

“I’m not going to take wheelchairs away from people just to balance a budget,” Raggio said.

But, if the Democrats start to get “partisan,” i.e. push agendas for things such as collective bargaining for state employees, prevailing wage laws or rent control, and he’ll object, Raggio promised. “I don’t have time to play games,” he said.