First Transit deserves local bus contract

To the editor:

Competition is great. In terms of the local bus contract, Veolia lost and First Transit won (Review-Journal, Sunday). Why? Because First Transit came in with a lower price and apparently is willing to operate the transit system for less profit than Veolia -- to say nothing of the fact that the company offered innovative, cost-saving operational and volume-purchasing alternatives.

Veolia's first response to losing was to claim First Transit's bid was flawed and that its competitor couldn't possibly operate at the level outlined in the bid. But the Regional Transportation Commission hired an independent financial analyst who confirmed that First Transit's bid was valid and achievable.

The next step for Veolia was to try to juice through a different result. That hasn't worked, either. Now the company has turned to a PR campaign, trying to scare everyone that First Transit is going to take advantage of the current employees by reducing their wages and benefits.

Veolia is now making an all-out PR attempt to win the contract by promising to give union officials anything they want -- and the company's bid reflected that generosity. That is one of the reasons Veolia came in at a higher cost. It may have been well-intended to curry favor with the union, but it was a bad bidding strategy.

As a taxpayer, I hope that whoever has the contract will do their very best to negotiate the best deal they can, to be fair, but not give the store away to the union.

Veolia's attitude and coziness with the union should come as no surprise to anyone. It is a French-owned and based company. The fact is, Veolia operates transit systems in 28 different countries -- with the United States being one.

The other fact is that Veolia bought ATC/Vancom, who was the successful bidder of the RTC transit contract. This was Veolia's first time to actually bid the contract. It appears the company believed that buying a North American operation and incumbency allowed them to earn $7 million more a year. Wrong.

Instead of Veolia crying about First Transit now having a monopoly on the transit market in Clark County, company officials should get their pencils out, sharpen them and see if they can't learn from First Transit and submit a lower bid when the para-transit contract comes up to bid. Veolia or some other transit contractor can break that monopoly by simply doing homework and giving the taxpayers, who are the real payers of this system, a better deal. They already operate para-transit systems in other cities in the United States -- so they should know how.

Incumbent transit management companies are seldom on the losing end of a bid. Their incumbency gives them an advantage of knowing the system inside and out, to say nothing of the relationships they build up over the years with the local government boards that approve the contracts.

My hat is off to the RTC commissioners who threw incumbency and political pressure from the union out the door and gave Clark County taxpayers the best bang for their buck.

Barry Perea

Las Vegas

The writer ran Las Vegas Transit in the 1970s and '80s.

Pay up

To the editor:

In his Sunday column, John L. Smith advocated that former Nevada Sen. John Ensign should have to make restitution for the cost of September's 2nd Congressional District special election to replace his replacement, ex-Rep. Dean Heller. But why stop there?

How about applying this concept to police agencies. Should rank-and-file officers be on the hook every time one of them does something that causes the taxpayer to lay out money for misdeeds or mistakes?

And how about elected officials when they commit tax dollars to a public project that goes over budget? Should those politicians be on the hook for the cost overruns? The Regional Justice Center comes to mind.

What about public employees such as traffic engineers? If errors or oversights in the planning or execution of our public transportation systems result in lawsuits, should the people responsible for such be made to pay for the costs to the taxpaying public?

And why limit it to restitution for mistakes and misdeeds that cost the taxpayers? When a politician gets caught committing acts that result in incarceration, should he not have to foot the cost for such? This could be extended to schoolteachers caught having inappropriate relations with their students.

For that matter, anytime a citizen commits a crime that results in jail or prison time, maybe he should have to foot the bill.

What Mr. Smith advocates is dangerous.

Don Dieckmann

Henderson

Beasts of burden

To the editor:

Reader Stephen Anderson wrote Friday that an individual without health insurance becomes a burden to taxpayers, who end up paying his bill. I agree, but I expected him to then write, "So stop making other people pay for the uninsured." But he didn't. Instead, he wrote "mandate that all people have insurance."

But that doesn't solve the problem. People without money for health insurance will still get it "free" from the government. How is that different? You're calling it something else, but the result is the same -- people who work and pay taxes are the beasts of burden for those who don't.

Mr. Anderson states that we need to "share in the burden of health care." That is Marxist communism at its finest: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

We may end up going down the communist road on this, but at least let's not mince words. The current vision of health care reform is communism.

J. Daluga

Henderson