Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.
Gov. Jim Gibbons has good news for Southern Nevadans concerned or infuriated about traffic - and that means pretty much all of you: Fixing it won't cost you a dime, and no need to address it right away.
And the new chief executive also has a message for a transportation task force that met for months and produced what Gibbons (in his State of the State speech) called a "particularly useful" report on how to finance a $3.8 billion transportation infrastructure deficit: By particularly useful, I meant totally worthless.
Amid all the tragicomic talk of how the governor knows little about the centerpiece of his education program - he is not empowered in that area - and his willingness to let Queen Dawn spend $10,000 on an inaugural ensemble - he actually bragged about the designer outfit in a news release - is the harsh reality of how his administration is punting on the top-of-mind issue in the south.
In his zeal to keep the one promise he understood (no new taxes), Gibbons has dismissed the thoughtful recommendations of an experienced panel, proposed a nebulous public-private partnership approach and now says he wants to continue to study the issue with a new blue-ribbon task force. And with every day that goes by, that $3.8 million deficit continues to grow, like the waiting time on Interstate 15 or U.S. 95 or Decatur Boulevard.
It may be unfair to say that because Gibbons is from Reno that he really doesn't get how acute the problem is down here. But it's also unfathomable that a governor from Southern Nevada would not have made this a priority, instead of the gobbledygook we heard in the State of the State address last week that redefines the hackneyed phrase "empty rhetoric." To wit:
"There are too many Nevada highways becoming gridlocked, and transportation issues are increasingly central to the quality of life we enjoy. A well-functioning highway system is vital to Nevada's economy and will be a major factor in how we move forward in the future."
Stop the presses. He went on to patronize the members of that 17-member task force that engaged in months of debate and research to arrive at specific proposals, including minor adjustments in driver's license fees, reallocating sales tax revenue, exploring toll roads and raising gas taxes.
Forget that tying road improvements to the gas tax makes sense even to some conservatives. Or that this committee spent hours vetting various proposals, clearly recognized the importance of the issue to the valley and state economies and did not recommend tax and fee increases without painful deliberation.
But how could Gibbons a few days ago blithely suggest that another study group be impaneled while at the same time falsely declaring the first one, stuffed with Gibbons supporters, did not come up with funding solutions?
This is no panel of slouches Gibbons denigrated, either. It included: Businessman and longtime chamber player Tim Cashman, homebuilders guru Irene Porter, gamer Mark Russell, tax maven Carole Vilardo and County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a visionary on traffic issues.
Makes me also wonder how the gamers down here - MGM Mirage and Station Casinos, for instance - who anointed this man as their governor must feel now that one of their higher priorities has been given short shrift. When you give a guy hundreds of thousands of dollars, the least you can expect is that he will keep a promise or two.
This is a triumph of simplicity - read my lips - over common sense, an object lesson of how hollow campaigns yield facile solutions. This issue requires no more study, no more panels, blue-ribbon or otherwise. The word "crisis" is thrown around a lot in politics but nowhere is it more apt than to describe the Southern Nevada transportation mess.
The governor and, I fear, a supine Gang of 63 are just hoping that the public is too benighted to figure out this craven behavior and have no faith that voters, when educated on a problem, will agree to play a role in paying to fix it.
So next time you are late for an appointment and cursing the pace of traffic improvements, undoubtedly not feeling very empowered and perhaps not dressed in Armani, ask yourself the same question about our Northern governor that the Strip folks are probably asking these days: Whose governor is this anyway?
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