Weekly Editorial Recap
WEDNESDAY
The governor's bold agenda
In one day, Gov. Brian Sandoval has initiated more major government reforms than Nevada's three previous governors championed in 22 years. ...
In Nevada's public schools, Gov. Sandoval wants to get rid of teacher tenure and eliminate seniority-based layoffs, which punish recent hires regardless of how they've performed. He wants to end social promotion and assign letter grades to schools to better hold them accountable to parents and taxpayers. Gov. Sandoval also proposes a constitutional amendment to create means-tested private school vouchers. ...
To address the state's growing unfunded pension liabilities ... Gov. Sandoval wants the annual pension benefits of future hires capped at 35 percent of their highest-earning years, with the rest of their retirement coming from a defined-contribution, 401(k)-style plan that greatly reduces the exposure to taxpayers.
Now it's up to Gov. Sandoval to use the bully pulpit of his office and take his case to the public. ... He must make it politically impossible for majority Democrats to ignore him.
TUESDAY
PUBLIC-PRIVATE WAGE GAP GROWS
Nevada state government employees, who are balking at Gov. Brian Sandoval's proposal to trim wages by 5 percent, will doubtlessly find little succor or solace in a study for The New York Times by demographers at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Using census data, the study confirmed state workers job-for-job are paid more than their counterparts in the private sector. The gap in Nevada is one of the highest in the nation. ...
What makes things even worse for state employees: The study looked only at wages and did not take into account benefits and pensions, which in Nevada are quite handsome. ...
As if that news weren't bad enough, on Monday the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce came out with another study of state and local government worker compensation showing Nevada's public employees have the ninth-highest pay in the country. ...
Even a 5 percent cut in state worker salaries will leave most of them far better off than those who pay their salaries with private-sector wages. While many in the state Legislature insist taxes simply must be raised in order to continue providing vital services, it is difficult to justify when this kind of wage disparity exists -- and is getting worse.
MONDAY
PIRATE ATTACKS
Our armed forces have the assets necessary to locate and sink the mother ships from which these pirate craft operate. We have the assets necessary to locate and destroy the ports from which they sail, whether via aerial bombardment, naval gunfire or landing a detachment of demolition experts.
If the enormous expenditures the American public lavishes on the "defense establishment" mean anything, they should mean that American citizens can travel unmolested on any waters they please, and that when Americans are murdered in cold blood, those who commit such acts should expect all hell to break loose, considerably impacting the structural integrity of whatever homes they hail from.
