Public forum

The city of Las Vegas held a town hall meeting on budget cuts Monday night, and almost no taxpayers showed up.

Every seat in the theater at Summerlin Library was occupied. However, most every attendee was a city employee -- a tax consumer.

City leaders hoped to hear from the people who actually pay the city's bills -- employers, business owners, private-sector workers -- to gauge what services they value most. There will be at least $70 million worth of operational reductions for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Instead, they were confronted by an audience most concerned with keeping the gravy flowing.

City workers, who have long enjoyed salaries and benefits far better than those of the people they serve, know the unsustainable growth in their compensation is the government's biggest liability. They have been asked to accept 8 percent pay reductions in each of the next two years, with the elimination of all pay raises and no promise of their return, and with no guarantee that those reductions will be enough to avert some layoffs. Or, they can stand pat and hope to survive massive layoffs.

Monday's meeting offered nothing new to the debate over city finances, but nonetheless posed an interesting question:

What are the odds that any taxpaying Las Vegas resident, who has sacrificed and endured hardships to weather this recession, would be eager to enter an auditorium full of public employees to raise legitimate questions about public employee compensation -- the largest component of the city's general fund -- let alone urge pay cuts, the elimination of positions and the outsourcing of many services?