Letter: Guinn deserves many thanks for service

Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006 | 8:35 a.m.

As president of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, I want to say a huge thank you to Gov. Kenny Guinn for his eight years of service. While many may remember him for being the governor who brought us the Millennium Scholarship, we have something else to remember him by. Gov. Guinn took a big risk and advocated to ensure that those social service and educational programs would get the funding they needed to provide for all Nevadans.

Although tax increases are never popular, it was necessary to fill a huge fiscal void in our state. As more people move to Las Vegas, the need for quality services will continue to grow. As an educator - I am a professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada - I certainly do not enjoy telling my students each semester that Nevada ranks poorly in many of the areas that impact them the most.

Gov. Guinn should be commended because he had the guts to go against not only members of his own Republican Party but also those who seem to be diagnosed with a case of cultural lag in failing to see that along with growth and profit comes responsibility.

I should point out that those tax increases in 2003 merely caught us up, so to speak, to bare minimum standards. Being a growing state, we still have ongoing needs. We ask Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons to embrace our exiting governor's spirit of compassion and see to it that future legislation and policy serve the needs of all the people.

Kenya Pierce, North Las Vegas