Housing subsidy

Here's one potential budget cut.

As part of their contract negotiations three years ago, the Culinary Union asked Southern Nevada casino companies to contribute to a $2 million fund to help union members buy homes. To date, almost 200 families have used about $1.2 million from of the fund to help subsidize their down payments to purchase homes.

By attracting matching grants from the state -- that operation is called the Employer Assisted Housing Program -- the operation has leveraged $24.3 million in home sales in Southern Nevada.

Under the program, union members can get as much as $20,000 in down-payment assistance if they first qualify for a mortgage and contribute 1 percent of the purchase price. Borrowers must repay the down payment loan if the home is sold or refinanced.

Betty Roark of the Nevada Housing Division says you do not have to be a Culinary member to participate. However, you have to work for a casino that is willing to contribute to the Culinary fund.

Now, the unions and the firms that manage local casinos and hotels are free agents; if both came to a voluntary agreement to help finance home purchases as a fringe benefit for employees -- and providing lending institutions are fully informed -- that's great.

But while the notion that non-union members at Culinary properties can participate is all very nice, the state is still helping create a benefit in which employees of non-union casinos (and any other non-union employer, presumably) are barred from participating. Imagine the outcry should the state agree to "piggy-back" its subsidies in order to benefit the members of only one given country club or church.

All this at a time when the Legislature wails it's having trouble finding places to cut $880 million in excess spending?