Editorial: Numbers must trump ideology

Tuesday, April 1, 2003 | 8:46 a.m.

It was a jolt for Gov. Kenny Guinn and state Budget Director Perry Comeaux when they learned that rental payments the state was making on land for its motor pool were about to go up 260 percent, from about $10,000 a year to $36,000 a year. The state maintains a fleet of nearly 800 cars on a site near McCarran International Airport. Clark County, owner of the site, informed the state that it needs the land for expansion and would charge the higher rent until the state moved its motor pool somewhere else. In January, Guinn and Comeaux decided to see if state employees whose jobs require travel could be better served by a private company.

After bids from five rental car companies had been analyzed earlier this month, the state announced it would continue with its own motor pool. The lowest bid was $4.2 million. The state ran its own numbers and determined it could provide the same service -- without the confusion of changing over to a new system -- for $2.8 million. The state's figure even includes the cost of moving from its current site. "This is a no-brainer," Comeaux told Cy Ryan, the Sun's reporter in Carson City.

But Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, a diehard privatization advocate, is still clinging to the hope that something in the state's analysis is not right. She is planning to pore over every digit -- an action that is her right and her responsibility. We hope, however, that her love of privatization will not blind her to the plain and simple numbers that clearly show this issue should be put to rest. If the cost differential alone isn't persuasive enough for her, Tiffany should remember the state's experience with the badly needed Summit View youth detention facility, which remains closed in the wake of scandals brought on by private management. Privatization should not be a stock answer when cost-cutting is the question.

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