WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

TUESDAY

FLAME ON!

Clark County expects next year's general fund to be at least $114 million smaller than this year's. County officials are not proposing pay or benefit cuts, schedule reductions or furloughs -- cost-cutting measures that scores of Southern Nevada businesses have had to undertake to survive this economic downturn. Rather, the county is merely asking all of its bargaining units to agree to reduced pay raises.

Las Vegas police and the county's service workers have agreed to take smaller pay raises than they've grown accustomed to. ...

But the International Association of Firefighters Local 1908 has effectively told the county -- and the struggling taxpayers who fund their fat paychecks -- to stick the request for concessions where the sun doesn't shine. ...

Of the department's 770 workers, 523 were paid more than $100,000 in 2007, including overtime, according to a Nevada Policy Research Institute analysis. Firefighters typically get 3 percent cost-of-living raises each year, along with annual step or longevity increases of about 6 percent.

The firefighters are under no obligation to modify their current contract. And county leaders deserve all the blame in the world for giving their public employee unions the keys to the treasury. These budget woes are a crisis of their own making, and they have to stop promising years of guaranteed pay raises ... to get a grip on the problem.

But firefighters need to take a look around this valley and reflect on the financial devastation wrecking households, businesses and governments alike. If they don't give something back, the public's heroes will look like selfish, spoiled brats.