Editorial: County is a grown-up now

Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

The billionaire dreamers of billion-dollar hotels must dutifully bring their building plans and requests for zoning variances before the Clark County Commission. The same is true for would-be builders of vast master-planned communities. Without the go-ahead from the seven-member commission, plans for development on the Strip and in the county's outlying areas would go nowhere.

With its nearly $6 billion budget and 10,000 employees, and with its regulatory power affecting the lives of 1.8 million residents spread out over its land mass that is larger than New Jersey, the county gives the impression of being all-powerful in Southern Nevada.

Yet it cannot even order that an improperly parked car be towed from its parking lot. The county was humbled by this fact just recently when the owner of the car, a lawyer, pointed out that the state has never granted the county this authority.

"If the law doesn't specifically say we can, then we can't," a county administrator had to admit.

The problem is that the county lacks what is known as "home rule," or the authority to make many large and small decisions on its own without first getting permission from the state. Members of the Nevada Legislature have refused to grant the county more autonomy, even though the county, through its growth, is now considered the state's economic engine.

A more important example occurred in November 2004, when a majority of Clark County voters approved a quarter-cent sales tax increase to put more police officers on the street. County commissioners had to wait until after the 2005 Legislature approved the tax before voting on it themselves.

We believe it is time for the Legislature, which meets only once every two years, to grant more power to Clark County.