Work card reform

Whether it's enumerated or not, Americans have a right to seek work and earn a living without first applying to the government for permission.

So it's not surprising that many Review-Journal readers expressed outrage over the humiliation heaped upon Navy veteran and former casino dealer and floor supervisor Beverly Whitby last week. She went before the Las Vegas City Council in a public, televised hearing, standing at a microphone and discussing with council members the details of her degradation and run-ins with the vice squad on prostitution charges after a man she knew broke into her house and savagely beat her a decade ago. Then her parents and eldest daughter died, at which point she was left scraping bottom and living under a bridge.

Even members of the City Council expressed embarrassment that Ms. Whitby, now on the rebound after completing her required public service, had to publicly air her dirty laundry and plead for permission to work.

Like hundreds of Southern Nevadans, she'd been turned down for a sheriff's work card, which she needs to take a job inside city limits, even though she has already held a similar position in unincorporated Clark County. Under a system apparently unique to Nevada, those rejected by police are allowed to appeal directly to the City Council.

The work card system was developed half a century ago, when burgeoning Las Vegas was trying to clean up the image of mobster-run casinos. The idea was for police to run background checks on those who sought to handle large sums of money or take up other positions of trust in the casinos, thus guaranteeing that such applicants didn't have lengthy records for "crimes of moral turpitude."

But Ms. Whitby wasn't applying for work in a casino counting room. She already works as a convenience store clerk in Clark County - she just wanted to be able to do the same job at a convenience store operated by the same employer across the street, in City of Las Vegas jurisdiction.

Over the years, the city's work card requirements have expanded. They now cover 18 occupations, including baby sitters, dance instructors, martial arts instructors and door-to-door salesmen. (Clark County requires the cards for eight fields, North Las Vegas for 15 job categories.)

Might it be wise for employers to conduct background checks to screen applicants in some of these fields? Quite possibly. But that decision - and the costs incurred - should fall to the private employer. For the cash-strapped Metropolitan Police Department to continue assigning squads of high-value employees to the task of processing some 25,000 work card applications each year - 98 percent of which are approved, anyway - is absurd.

Today, casino owners operate within an effective regulatory environment. Gaming regulators have the authority to conduct their own investigations, or require that regulated enterprises provide convincing proof they're not employing shady characters in positions of trust. It may well be time to dump this entire anachronistic system, at the local level, entirely.

Fingerprinting our would-be waiters and waitresses? Really?

The City Council has ordered a study of just such possible reforms, due in January. It's about time.