Rivals for County Commission seat bash each other’s records in debate

Two Clark County Commission candidates traded jabs Monday in their first debate, bashing each other's public service records.

Republican Douglas Bell, 58, a retired 30-year county employee, and Democrat Mary Beth Scow, 57, who spent 12 years on the School Board, are competing for the District G seat that Rory Reid is vacating.

They debated in front of several hundred people gathered at the Congregation Ner Tamid in Henderson.

Both candidates touted their government experience while lambasting the other's resume. The mutual barbs were a departure from campaigning that up until now has been civil and subdued.

Bell said Scow's time overseeing a school district in which half the students drop out was nothing to boast about.

"We have the worst school district in the country," Bell said. "You're not going to have economic diversification when businesses don't want to bring their children here."

Scow shot back, saying her experience governing a large entity made her more qualified than Bell, who mainly managed a small county unit. She defended her record, saying the district wrestled with rapid growth in enrollment while receiving limited state funding.

"My opponent is a 30-year bureaucrat," Scow said. "And he's collecting a nice bit of retirement" from the system he now criticizes, she added, referring to Bell's $96,000-a-year public pension.

Bell said he was "a 30-year public servant" who worked in the county finance department, obtaining and administering grants that helped build housing and other amenities for residents.

He said his years in the trenches taught him how government works from the inside out.

The two candidates agreed that labor costs can't be sustained and that county employees' compensation must be scaled back. But Bell insisted he would be more aggressive in trimming these costs.

Longevity pay and sick leave must be reduced, Bell argued. And employees must shift to a retirement plan that requires more contributions on their part.

Scow, who has been endorsed by the county's largest public employee union, said that wages and benefits should be reduced, but she didn't give specifics.

"We have to be conservative in our approach," Scow said about labor contracts.

She reiterated her opposition to binding arbitration because it's set up to have an official choose one side's offer and reject the other. The school district, she said, lost some disputes and wound up paying millions of dollars in pay raises.

"It's better to have both sides working together," Scow said. "We need to have shared sacrifice."

Bell said he learned as a manager to tell his employees "no" to requests that he felt would cost too much money. As a Republican, he would bring that same attitude to the commission when dealing with unions, he said.

The commission is now made up of all Democrats who have received endorsements, donations and grass-roots campaigning from unions, he said, arguing that discourages tough stances on labor.

"The board as a whole has been soft on unions," Bell said.

Scow and Bell agreed that University Medical Center is a huge financial drain from which the county must free itself.

Scow said she liked the county's current effort to turn it into a research and teaching hospital.

Bell, however, said making UMC a teaching hospital was a worthy goal that could take many years. As long as the hospital cares for uninsured and indigent patients, it will run a deficit, he said. The county might have to consider letting a nonprofit company take it over, he said.

Neither candidate talked about how they would handle layoffs. Both Scow and Bell have said they think it's better to cut employees' compensation than lay off workers.

Contact reporter Scott Wyland at swyland@reviewjournal.com or 702-455-4519.