Reno officials have a problem with their spending priorities. They very much want to build new police and fire stations in one of the city's fast-growing areas, but they can't find the money for the projects.
So they have their eyes on a cookie jar: a voter-approved revenue stream dedicated to road maintenance and improvements.
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In 2004, the local electorate decided to extend a property levy that funds road repairs and retires city debt. Voters approved the extension to preserve an accelerated highway maintenance schedule and ensure that city leaders wouldn't fund other programs and projects at the expense of roads.
Reno City Manager Charles McNeely wants to take $2 million from street maintenance to pay off bonds, then sell the bonds to pay for the police and fire stations. The plan would end the accelerated schedule and resume the pace of maintenance that led to a backlog of road work.
"If we go with that option, it would delay (the roads program) a couple of years, but it would all still get done," Mr. McNeely told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
But there's a big problem with that option: Two years ago, a majority of Reno voters declared road maintenance a priority. Through that vote, Reno residents said they didn't want city officials spending that revenue on anything else.
If city officials want to use roads revenue for something else, there's a general election in November. They can ask voters to set aside some of that money for public safety.
If Reno follows through on this idea, it would set a horrible precedent for other local governments in Nevada.
Imagine the uproar in Southern Nevada if Clark County commissioners decided to divert revenue from the quarter-percentage-point sales tax approved by voters for road and transit improvements -- or cut back on police funding in the wake of a voter-approved tax hike to hire more officers.
Mr. McNeely and other Reno bureaucrats must keep their hands off that particular tax.
It should be illegal for governments to redirect revenue that has been allocated by voters for other, specific purposes.
