County manager says growth hurting social services

David Kihara

Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

The rapid growth in Clark County is continuing to hurt many of the area's social services, including Clark County's foster care system, access to medical care and juvenile offender services, Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said this week.

He told the Clark County Growth Task Force on Tuesday that the fast pace of growth in Clark County has "exacerbated" many of the social issues facing Clark County while many resources have been channeled elsewhere

"There is a disproportionate amount of services and needs going to public safety," Reilly said. Approximately 42 percent of the county's general fund expenditures are currently earmarked for "public safety" issues for the 2005 fiscal year, he said. Metro police and the Clark County Fire Department take up the bulk of the general fund expenditures.

On Nov. 2, Clark County voters supported a measure that would raise the sales tax by a quarter-cent in order to fund more police services throughout the county. On Tuesday, County Commissioners voted unanimously to pass a measure ensuring that the monies collected from the sales-tax increase would in fact go toward adding more officers to the police force.

Yet what Clark County needs as much as more police is more money for social services, Reilly said Wednesday.

"When you look at the needs in the county, they should be prioritized together," Reilly said.

According to Reilly, the budget commitments going to the Metro police have outpaced the revenue coming into the county, which has caused other areas, such as the Public Defender's office, to suffer.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others have strongly criticized the county's public defenders office in the past. A 2001 report showed that the office in 1999 brought only 156 of 28,898 indigent defense cases -- less than 2 percent -- to trial. The national average at the time was between 4 percent and 7 percent.

While some of those issues had been addressed after a new Clark County public defender, Phil Kohn, took control of the office in March and new staff was added, problems still surrounded the embattled office.

Earlier this summer, the ACLU threatened to bring a lawsuit against Clark County because it alleged that the Public Defenders office did not adequately represent minors accused of crimes.

Reilly said that while staffing increases have greatly relieved the attorney shortage -- since 2002 the Public Defender's office has added 37 new positions -- there is still a greater need for more resources.

"What are the things that matter most?" Reilly said. "We can't do everything well. We take on everything but don't do anything well -- we need to focus."

According to Reilly the county also experienced a 30 percent increase in the number of child abuse and neglect cases recently, from 6,359 in 2000 to 8,200 in 2003. In this year alone, the number of investigations performed by the county's child welfare department grew 9 percent, he said.

Even though the county's child welfare division has received the majority of new staff transfers in recent years, the high number of cases per worker is still much too high, Reilly said.

"Our ability to respond is limited because of the huge caseloads," he said.

Much of this is directly tied to the rapid growth in the county. Robert Schmidt, from UNLV's Lied Institute of Real Estate Studies, said that the population growth in Las Vegas is different than in other cities because those who move here often do not have a pre-existing family infrastructure or friends. Therefore, when a family crisis occurs, they have no one to turn to.

In Clark County, that is made worse because there are few nonprofit and nongovernmental groups in the county that could fill any holes in service that the county can't provide, he said. And in cases involving child abuse or neglect, the county, state or federal governments are not always the best option for people.

But the bottom line is "we lack a lot of that infrastructure (of nonprofit or community groups) in Las Vegas," he said.

Other social issues that are of concern to the county include the uninsured. According to Reilly there are between 120,000 and 350,000 uninsured residents in Clark County. Minorities make up many of the uninsured, he said, adding that 60 percent of Hispanics and 42 percent of blacks in Clark County are uninsured.

The task force heard the presentation and is studying a number of issues associated with growth. It is expected to come back with recommendations on growth after a series of meetings.