Editorials

Andy Hafen’s second term as mayor of Henderson will be his last. The Nevada Supreme Court declared as much earlier this year when it issued a surprising clarification on the state constitution’s voter-approved term limits amendment. And the city’s citizen Charter Committee assured as much last week when it declined to recommend a change to Henderson’s governance structure that could have kept Mr. Hafen in office through the end of the decade.

Law enforcement agencies have a difficult enough task even when they have the support of the citizens they serve. It certainly doesn’t get any easier when that public trust is broken, something the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives learned earlier this month.

The Las Vegas Township constable’s office will close come January, having been abolished by the Clark County Commission. But the next five months can’t go fast enough as Constable John Bonaventura continues to make a mockery of his elected post. Lately, it seems not even a week can pass without more troubling or even outlandish news coming out of the office.

The TSA, only slightly more popular than the IRS, is about to become the IRS.

Government isn’t structured to run efficiently. It’s a rare moment when the private sector doesn’t outperform the bureaucrats who would purport to be our betters, even in areas dominated by government hype. Like being eco-friendly.

In a move that could boost economies along the East Coast, the Obama administration approved the use of underwater sound blasts to pinpoint the locations of oil and gas deposits beneath Atlantic Ocean waters. Environmentalists are less than pleased with the decision, but President Barack Obama deserves praise for it.

In case you’re keeping score at home, the Department of Veterans Affairs repeatedly ignored and hid warnings from whistleblowers about a pattern of negligent practices resulting in delays in care, shoddy treatment and needless patient deaths at its medical centers. According to a report by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., VA negligence cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion in malpractice settlements over the past decade and may have killed up to 1,000 veterans.

It’s rare that we advocate for public-sector raises in the best of times, and even more unlikely under the current conditions. Generally speaking, private-sector workers aren’t reaping any benefits from the still-sluggish recovery following the Great Recession, and here in Clark County, the taxpaying public also faces a never-ending push to increase taxes on several fronts.

When President Barack Obama unveiled the Affordable Care Act, it was quickly and mockingly renamed “Obamacare” by Republicans and others. The name stuck, and the president eventually embraced it.

The Clark County School District is getting a tough lesson in math as it deals with surging enrollment and aging campuses, amid numbers that come nowhere near adding up. As the Review-Journal’s Trevon Milliard reported last week, the district plans to spend $301 million in the next five years on capital projects, including replacing one school entirely, renovating and replacing equipment at older schools, and adding portable classrooms to alleviate student crowding.