Editorial: Fine tune CAT bus contract

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 5:13 a.m.

Before there was Citizens Area Transit serving the Las Vegas Valley, there was a bus company that mainly served tourists wanting to get from one hotel to the other. The public wanted something a lot more than this "Strip crawler," as the company was derisively known. The Regional Transportation Commission responded 10 years ago with CAT, and it took only a few months for tens of thousands of people to become regular riders. Knowing that high labor costs would slow the rate by which CAT could expand, the RTC avoided governmental wage and benefits standards by contracting with a private company to hire the drivers and run the system. Until three weeks ago that decision was praised as a leading reason for CAT's award-winning scope of service.

Now the decision is not so universally praised. A majority of CAT drivers are striking, claiming through their union that cheap labor should no longer be the underpinning of the system's success. Riders are now being forced to wait much longer in the hot summer sun for a bus, if they are lucky enough to be served at all. ATC Vancom, the multinational private management company, is importing replacement drivers from some of its other transit services around the country -- an act that the history of labor-management struggles shows can turn ugly.

Suddenly the CAT system is showing the vulnerability of privatization, which has taken hold throughout government. Privatization cannot succeed unless labor costs are kept comparatively low, which over time can lead to poor service, public safety concerns and labor problems. Public employees, by contrast, generally receive higher pay, have direct governmental supervision and are prohibited by law from striking.

Governments are under tremendous pressure from the public to provide quality services while holding down costs. But ceding all authority over public services to private companies can get messy. If privatization is chosen -- and we still believe it's the wrong choice -- then those contracts must leave government with some power if problems arise. The RTC, for example, has no authority to intervene in the drivers' strike. Government should never be a mere observer when it comes to issues affecting public services.