WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

Thursday

Pay concessions -- but just barely

Clark County workers represented by the Service Employees International Union -- pretty much the entire non-management payroll outside of public safety -- are the most recent bargaining group to make contract "concessions" in the midst of the struggling economy.

Their sacrifice? Nearly 10,000 county employees will get pay raises of about 5 percent in each of the next two years -- a 1 percent "cost-of-living" raise with no relation to the cost of living, and a 4 percent "merit" raise with no meaningful link to actual performance -- instead of the 8 percent raises they previously had negotiated. ...

These concessions are minimal, at best.

Clark County's finances have fallen off a cliff. ...

To balance the general fund, the county must freeze 200 positions at University Medical Center, the county's only public hospital. It must leave 400 other county positions vacant and possibly delay the opening of a badly needed low-level offender jail. Taxpayers would still have to spend more than $11 million per year to the jail's developer, even though the facility would remain empty and unstaffed.

The SEIU's sacrifice will "save" the county less than $10 million per year -- while ensuring its personnel costs continue to compound each year. Combined with the aforementioned cost-cutting measures, it doesn't even get Clark County halfway to the spending reductions it needs to identify. Officials still have no idea how to slash an additional $44 million. ...

Clark County commissioners have made it their top priority over the years to transfer every available taxpayer dime to the employee unions which in turn dedicate their support to re-electing incumbents. ...

This savage cycle of wage growth left the county suffocated before it even started its budget planning process. And the commission's response was to not only support labor cost increases it clearly cannot afford, but to extend its contract with the SEIU for an additional year. Instead of drawing a hard line and demanding short-term, good-faith gestures that reflect the severity of the recession, the county has entered a fiscal suicide pact. ...