Starting somewhere

     How best to describe the fruits produced after 10 years of Las Vegas' participation in the Sister Cities program? Meager? Scant? Feeble?
      Take your pick.
      A decade and at least $500,000 of taxpayer money after Las Vegas and AnSan, South Korea, joined to become Sister Cities, City Councilman Arnie Adamsen's passport bears many colorful South Korean stamps. In addition, Las Vegas has picked up two more Sister Cities -- Phuket, Thailand, and Huludao, China.
      But the city has yet to experience the boom in Pacific Rim investment supporters of the program tout as inevitable.
      Instead, Las Vegas has provided one Korean company with a bargain-basement deal on land in a northwest office park, but the company has yet to break ground on a plant. Another Korean company also received land at below-market prices in the same area, and is supposed to begin building a souvenir-making plant there this summer.
      That's quite a haul.
      Mr. Adamsen, the council's most high-profile supporter of the program, assures us more projects are coming. "You have to start somewhere," he said.
      That's true. And if the tide is ever to turn on the public sector's pathological penchant for perpetuating every taxpayer draining bureaucratic scheme, you also have to start somewhere.
      It is telling that supporters of many government programs prefer platitudes and vague promises to objective goals that define results. By never setting the high bar, they hope to pass off flopping around in the pit as an accomplishment.
      By any objective standard, the Sister Cities program has provided little bang for the buck here. Three years ago, part of the funding was privatized, but the national Sister Cities office reports that Las Vegas still contributes a more generous portion of the local program's budget than do most municipal governments.
      At the very least, the city ought to adjust its annual contribution to better reflect a more typical public-private split. Ideally, if it seeks to continue in the program, it ought to seek full private sponsorship.