Editorials

More and more, the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange looks like a sinking ship. So it should have come as no surprise that its captain jumped into a lifeboat last week. As reported by the Review-Journal’s Jennifer Robison, Jon Hager, executive director of the exchange, announced he would resign from the agency effective March 14.

Lobbying failed to produce new revenue for the Metropolitan Police Department. Perhaps some public pain will do the trick.

Seldom do real-life dramas so perfectly write themselves for the screen. If the recent struggle and triumph of Moapa’s modest Roos-N-More zoo isn’t a movie on The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon or Lifetime by the end of the year, the writers and producers who constantly prowl Las Vegas for material have no heart.

During the more than five years that Barack Obama has been president, his administration has consistently demonstrated a disdain for the free press, monitoring the phone records of The Associated Press, tracking the movements of Fox News’ James Rosen, pursuing leakers with Nixonian zeal and limiting news conferences in favor of softball interviews.

Finally acceding to an order from the Nevada Supreme Court, the state’s pension system has provided the public with its first glimpse at the taxpayer-funded benefits provided to retired government employees.

The margins tax was a terrible idea from the moment the state teachers union put it on paper and began collecting signatures to qualify it for the 2014 ballot. But we now know the initiative is even worse than previously thought: In addition to killing jobs, the plan, if passed, creates a huge disincentive for small business growth.

What’s worse than a government agency wasting your money? Two government agencies working together to waste your money.

It won’t be a glimmering new downtown arena that seats 20,000 and is loaded with luxury suites. Nor will it be a stadium with a retractable roof on the UNLV campus.

Police and prosecutors everywhere have long used informants to build criminal cases against well-guarded individuals and organizations. There are risks to informants and authorities. There aren’t supposed to be risks to the public.

The Metropolitan Police Department spent much of last year fighting for more funding from the Clark County Commission. Sheriff Doug Gillespie was aiming to cover a $30 million budget deficit and secure additional revenue to add more officers. That effort ended last month, when commissioners rejected a sales tax increase for police.