Wise use of money?

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009 | 2:04 a.m.

Clark County government likely faces a $120 million shortfall in tax revenue in the next fiscal year. This will undoubtedly cause pain: Layoffs of county workers and cuts in existing services to Clark County residents are in the offing.

So it was an outrage to read in the Las Vegas Sun last week that, at a time of difficult choices confronting government officials, a total of $34.6 million in longevity bonuses were paid to county employees last fiscal year.

The cost to the county actually is much higher, as reporter Joe Schoenmann disclosed in Thursday’s Sun. That’s because the bonus is counted as base pay, which means longevity pay causes the employees’ retirement funds to increase as well, to the tune of $7.5 million last fiscal year, and overtime payments went up by $2 million. The total cost to taxpayers from longevity pay in the most recent fiscal year: a bruising $44 million.

Just for showing up to work, more than 3,500 longtime employees qualified for longevity pay, and the median payment was $5,474. Employees who were working as of Oct. 15, 1991, were eligible for this handsome benefit just five years after they were hired; those hired later were eligible for longevity pay eight years after their start dates.

The largest longevity payment went to a Clark County Fire Department battalion chief employed since 1976 — $40,835. After you add in his overtime of $61,314 and regular pay, the battalion chief made a total of $224,442 last fiscal year. Of the top 10 recipients of longevity pay, nine went to fire department employees.

To put the compensation of county employees into perspective, it should be noted that the average salary-and-benefits package of county employees is $90,000, more than twice the average salary of $42,000 in the private sector in Clark County.

There is quite an irony when you consider a salient finding reported in a study last year, paid for by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce: Although local government workers in this state are paid 31 percent more on average than local government workers elsewhere in the nation, Nevada had per capita the lowest number of government employees.

In other words, those lucky enough to land a government job can hit the jackpot financially, often making twice what those in the private sector receive, but our state is miserly when it comes to having enough government workers and providing basic services for the public. It makes no sense.

“There are so many of these things — cost-of-living raises, step increase, merit raises, longevity bonuses, whatever you want to call them, you have to start asking: For what?” Commissioner Steve Sisolak said. “I talk to people in the private sector who are just happy to keep their jobs, and we’re giving all this money away. We have got to put a tighter rein on this. The county has got to get a handle on it.”

Indeed.

For years now county employees have racked up sizable benefits on top of their outstanding pay. When the economy was good, there wasn’t as much pressure for the county to curb the excessive benefits. But clearly the situation is out of control and it needs to stop.

The political dynamic in addressing this issue needs to be acknowledged, as the county gets ready to negotiate with unions whose contracts will end in the middle of the year, which is when the new fiscal year begins. The seven-member County Commission is made up of all Democrats, and employee unions tend to favor them over Republicans at election time. The employee unions are powerful and can make the difference in a close race.

Still, commissioners can’t bend to the employee unions’ influence, and we’re hopeful based on comments by some commissioners that longevity pay should be investigated. While there might be a temptation to grandfather in existing employees, yet reduce or eliminate longevity pay for new employees hired going forward, that would be wrong. There should be no sense of entitlement. If real savings are to be realized — money that could be used to offset cuts in essential government services that otherwise would occur because of the looming budget shortfall — then all employees need to share equally.

Longevity pay ostensibly is about keeping veteran employees who might otherwise leave for better salaries, whether in the private sector or a different government agency. But such a benefit is hardly common in the private sector, and it strains credulity to defend it when county employee salaries are lucrative. In today’s age, longevity pay is an anachronism that should be discarded.