Where I Stand— Brian Greenspun: A better quality of life

Thursday, March 8, 2001 | 10:27 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

THERE IS NO DOUBT about it, we are really confused.

If you listen to the rest of the country and read the magazines and news accounts about Las Vegas and the state of Nevada, you would tend to believe that we are the envy of modern America. One of the USA's fastest-growing cities and the model for what all the rest would like to be. That's what you'd think, all right, but the reality is that we do not deserve to be where the rest of the world thinks we are. That's because inherent in being the most envied city in the country is being among the most enlightened of the fast and growing metropolitan areas that continually make the top ten lists for desirability. On that score, Las Vegas has yet to earn a passing grade. Let me tell you why.

I was honored the other night by the Leadership Henderson division of the Henderson Chamber of Commerce, which asked me to speak to the first graduating class of students who have committed themselves, their time and their effort to be amongst the new cadre of leaders that is emerging from Nevada's second-largest and the fastest-growing city in the country. The subject matter was obvious. It centered on words like vision and leadership and commitment. Words that, for whatever reason, seem lacking in the language of Nevada's electoral elite.

The ride out to Lake Las Vegas for the event was particularly long because my wife, Myra, would not stop pestering me with any number of different questions, each designed to elicit an answer that should be obvious but one that I just couldn't form in any coherent way. Since Myra's efforts these past few years have been centered on public school education and the ways and means that private partnerships can be used to further that mission, her inquiries centered on word from the Nevada Legislature that the state was broke -- at least when it came to finding the dollars to pay what was necessary to attract the best and brightest teachers to our community to better serve our young people.

Nevada, it seems, is plagued with whatever is ailing the body politic that forces us to turn thumbs down to any revenue increases no matter how significant the need or worthy the cause. If it means new taxes, the idea is dead on arrival at the Legislature's door. The reason for that attitude, of course, is obvious. No politician has the stomach for the aggravation he or she will receive for even suggesting that a state such as ours -- wealthy and increasingly attractive to hundreds of thousands of new residents every year -- should be doing whatever is required to maintain or improve the quality of life of its residents. And that means, at a minimum, a first-class public school system that leads the way for education into the 21st century.

There was a time when leadership was defined by the willingness of elected officials at all levels to step out in front of the people to show them the way to a better quality of life. Today it is difficult to find a politician willing to even suggest that taxes are a necessary component to the kind and quality of life we all want for our families. There is one, though. And while he may not like my saying it, Myra and I visited with him at Leadership Henderson. His name is Mayor Jim Gibson.

Since Jim is one of the leading proponents of the Henderson State College, Myra directed her questions at him once we were seated, and it was clear that I wasn't going to let myself get dragged into a no-win situation, which is the way I describe our relationship when I know Myra is 100 percent right and I can't even bluff an answer. Her question to His Honor was thus: If it is true that Nevada doesn't have enough money to pay our teachers what they are worth, why on Earth would we start a new state college system with monies that could be better spent in our public schools? How can we even think about higher education when we won't spend the money for schoolbooks so our younger kids can learn to read and write and do the simplest forms of math?

I thought they were exactly the right questions to ask. So did Mayor Gibson, whose answer may not have seemed the politic one but was clearly the correct one. He explained all the good reasons for a state college in Henderson and then, without a blink or a twitch of any kind, told the table flat out that Nevadans could have both. He said we could and should be able to pay for the kind of higher education that people in this state need, as well as come up with the dollars that are essential for the schoolbooks and the teachers that Nevadans have a right to expect.

What he said was a mouthful and one, I suspect, that a majority of legislators, School Board members, commissioners and even the governor would agree with if they didn't feel so constrained by voters who hold good ideas and good government hostage to a concept of government that has no place in a growing society. In short, Nevada has the money to do most good things. What we lack is the courage to make it happen.

The other day the Supreme Court of Nevada threw out a teachers' initiative to raise revenues through a tax on businesses -- a first for our state -- because it wasn't written in a manner that would pass constitutional muster. Now there isn't a clue in all of Carson City about where we are going to get the money to pay for the schools we need to build, furnish and fill with books and teachers. Raising taxes is not even on the horizon of potential solutions.

I can remember a time when the Clark County School District was one of the best in the nation. It was a time when the people who led the way did so by example. And it started with a selfless determination to pay whatever the price for a quality of life they knew would make us the envy of the entire country. They were, I suppose, the good old days, which I am also told will never come back again.

That's the part I don't believe. We may never get back to the good old days, but there is absolutely no reason why we can't return to the good old ways of running a city, county and state. All it takes is leadership.

Anyone interested?

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