Politicians would act a lot differently if they had to personally pay for their wrongdoings. Consider Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones.
Editorials
Anyone who thinks spending more is the key to improving education needs to look at New York.
The sorry saga of the DMV’s computer upgrade doesn’t provide taxpayers with any confidence that state workers are held to a high standard when it comes to performance
Democrats insist they’re committed to promoting “affordable” housing. Yet virtually every policy they propose in that regard actually makes housing more expensive.
Stop negotiating with those who go beyond peaceful protests and break the law.
The Las Vegas City Council has been making front-page news for months, thanks to its efforts to build a tax-subsidized, privately owned soccer stadium in downtown’s Symphony Park against the public’s will. That issue alone was enough to awaken city voters from the slumber that normally surrounds municipal politics and compel thousands of them to sign petitions demanding a public vote on the project. The stadium plan died last month when Major League Soccer declined to award Las Vegas an expansion franchise, but the council’s handling of the project remains the dominant theme of the April 7 municipal primary election.
If Henderson residents want to change the culture of their city government, they’ll have to change their city’s elected leadership.
The city of North Las Vegas is out of the intensive care unit and in recovery. The threat of imminent state receivership is gone. Mayor John Lee, halfway through his first term, has outlined a vision to strengthen the city’s foundation and grow its economy.
Is there a single soul in Nevada who loves springing forward and falling back? Is there anyone who’ll stand up and passionately defend the practice of switching to daylight saving time in March and winding clocks forward an hour, then abandoning it each November and turning clocks back?
Is PERS a Ponzi scheme? Based on the testimony of the state pension system’s defenders, who oppose reforming retirement benefits for future government hires, it certainly appears so.
When the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities introduced legislation to gut the state’s public records law and price out public access to government, the group wasn’t taking a rogue action that defied the will of the organization’s membership. Precisely the opposite was true. The league sponsored Senate Bill 28 because it had the explicit, full support of entities at every level of Nevada government.
Give Clark County officials credit for learning from their mistakes. Shutting down a beloved animal sanctuary over red tape serves no good purpose.
The Las Vegas Valley has seen its share of important road projects over the years. The beltway has brought immeasurable relief to drivers, as has the widening of U.S. Highway 95 from the Spaghetti Bowl north to Centennial Hills. Interstate 15 looks nothing like the highway that ran west of the Strip 20 years ago, and Project Neon will transform it even more.
Our representatives in Washington, D.C., rarely have trouble coming up with ways to extract more money from the people, which is then spent on more government. So it’s surprising — and downright laudable — when a lawmaker goes to bat not once, but twice to get a tax completely repealed and keep money in the hands of those who can put it to far better use.
Government officials do not have the discretion to decide which documents are public records and which ones are confidential. They cannot reject a request for public records based on what they think the documents might be used for. They cannot set a cap on the number of records requests a party can submit. They do not have the latitude to reject some records requests because they complied with others. And they certainly can’t tell news organizations whether to report on government documents or when they must stop reporting on those public records.
