EDITORIAL: City looks petty in financial squabble with county

It took city of Las Vegas officials three decades to discover the municipality may be owed $3.7 million from Clark County. That works out to about $123,000 per year — or about the annual cost of one well-compensated city employee, of which there are many.

But to hear the city tell it, this is game-changing cash.

As reported last week by the Review-Journal's James DeHaven, the issue is a 1985 agreement that charges the county for services provided by the Las Vegas Fire Department in pockets of unincorporated county land within city limits. That deal requires the county to fork over 125 percent of fire district service taxes collected in those county islands — cash Las Vegas says it has never received.

"The thing that irritates me is the county has not acted all these years," Councilman Bob Coffin said.

The county has not acted all these years? Where exactly has the city been since "Back to the Future" was released? City officials have a responsibility to enforce contracts, as well. In this case, it took an audit in 2012 to uncover the agreement, and three more years for it to become a political issue. Yes, by contract, the city may be due payment, but if that contract hasn't been enforced by either party for three decades, it clearly isn't worth the paper it was printed on.

This is only now drawing the city's ire, over a relatively nominal amount of money over such an extended period, because money-grabbing city officials are doing everything short of dig through couch cushions for loose change. The city has fiscally unsustainable operations and no desire to pare back costs, so it's hunting for money wherever it can get it. Further, it's silly to believe that having the Las Vegas Fire Department respond to county islands imposes a huge financial burden. All those engines, ambulances and public safety workers are in service and on the clock, regardless.

The city has raised park fees, muscled in on patient transports at the expense of private ambulance service and now wants a big check from the county. If the city wants to annex the county islands — and if the residents of those islands want to be city residents — that should be a separate discussion.

If this is just a matter of the city being cash poor, then here's a tip: try cutting expenses.