Editorial: Please, get past the talk phase

Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002 | 8:53 a.m.

It might be interesting for people who are 40-something to know that consolidation -- meaning some type of merger between the city of Las Vegas and Clark County -- was a hot topic when they were babies. It continued to be a hot topic as they went through their schooling and off into their careers. Every decade of their lives has seen the rise and fall of consolidation talk. With Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman now raising the issue for the first time this decade, we hope today's babies won't be hearing the same-old, same-old when they are in their forties.

Most of the support for consolidation over the years has come from the city, which has done studies showing tax rates for its residents would be lowered under consolidation. Most of the opposition has come from the county, which has feared its residents would see higher taxes and also that services would become sluggish as government became more distant. Goodman, who three years ago supported breaking up Metro Police, one of the valley's consolidation success stories, is now saying consolidation is urgently needed and that he will form a blue-ribbon committee to plan it. This may set some people to rolling their eyes, as committees and task forces and focus groups have all been formed in the past and have all dissolved soon after being doused with the fluid reality of politics.

We would love for a consolidation committee, blue ribbon or otherwise, to succeed in preparing a definitive report for voters and elected officials to analyze. Consolidation, at least of some services, is an attractive concept. What's not attractive is all the gibber jabber -- great for babies but tiresome as the decades roll by.