Editorial: Don’t tie hands of the city

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2000 | 9:19 a.m.

The city of Las Vegas has whittled down its wish list of proposals it will submit to the 2001 Legislature, and one of them that certainly will generate controversy is the plan to change state law so that the city would be able to raise taxes to pay for the building of more urban and regional parks. The Las Vegas City Council wants state lawmakers to raise the maximum ceiling for the residential construction tax from $1,000 to $2,000.

But builders worry that housing costs already are increasing and note that higher taxes might be passed along to the new home buyer. And as the Sun's Erin Neff reported Tuesday, Councilman Michael McDonald privately has expressed his concerns that consumers would get tagged with these costs, possibly resulting in some looking outside the city to buy homes. Meanwhile, state lawmakers previously have resisted passing legislation that allows local governments to raise taxes. The reason for the hesitancy is that they fear getting tagged as "tax-and-spend" politicians.

The fact is, though, that this only is enabling legislation. It would be up to the local government -- in this case the Las Vegas City Council -- to decide whether taxes should be raised. Since these local officials are elected, they would have to answer to the public if they decided more money was needed. Sure, there will be opponents in future elections who will argue that the state lawmakers were "responsible" for new taxes if local governments raise them, but they should ignore such demagoguery. Indeed, a more risky course would be to ignore the wishes of local residents who increasingly have said they want more open spaces and parks.

While it is important that local governments have the ability to raise additional revenues to pay for parks, this shouldn't be considered an automatic endorsement that construction taxes should be increased. Indeed, even if the city were to get this new authority, it still would have to demonstrate thoroughly that it currently is using its current revenues efficiently before it even considers raising additional taxes. But the bottom line is that this is a decision that the City Council should make, not a state Legislature whose seat of government is more than 400 miles away and meets just once every two years.