City labor deal: The loser is …

The city of Las Vegas and its employee union reached a tentative agreement on labor concessions.

Here's the deal:

• City functions close on Fridays, giving all workers a three-day weekend.

• Union workers go to a 38-hour work week, 9.5-hour days four days a week.

• Suspended cost-of-living raises and step raises for two years.

• City functions shut down for Christmas week with workers taking that week as unpaid furlough.

This is the kind of baby-splitting that typically goes on between government and unionized employees. The union gives a little and the city gives a little.

But here's the problem. Absent a brave elected official, the one stakeholder left out of the negotiations is Las Vegas city taxpayers. It is obvious that the goal of this negotiation was to save the city money (about $20 million a year) and to preserve union worker jobs. Taxpayers, meanwhile, get to pay the same amount of taxes as before, but instead of buying a five-day work week, we get a four-day work week 51 weeks a year. In other words, we get to pay more for less.

This is fundamentally what is wrong with government in Nevada. The emphasis is never on the most efficient way to provide the people with a service. It's always about the service provider.