Budget crunch directs scrutiny to work cards

By Joe Schoenmann

Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The shrunken budget and the specter of layoffs are spurring a slew of money-saving suggestions from Clark County’s 38 departments.

“You’re always trying to think in new ways and we’re successful in that,” said Michael Murphy, Clark County coroner, whose office is trying to reduce overtime.

“But when you get faced with losing staff, you literally go to your staff and say, ‘What can we do?’ And there are ideas that prior to the budget crisis people might not be willing to accept, but they are now. Not to make light of the situation, but it causes people to be as creative as they possibly can.”

One of the proposed changes that some say is long overdue: Drastically reducing the number of jobs for which work cards are required.

The county requires work cards for servers and dancers at strip clubs, mobile food vendors, outcall operators, locksmiths, temporary merchants, property managers, martial arts instructors, amusement park employees, telephone solicitors, traveling show employees and theater managers.

Metro Police issue about 10,000 work cards each year.

The proposal is to require the cards only for child care workers and security personnel.

Getting a work card can cost up to $135.25 when fees for an FBI background check and fingerprint processing are figured in. Sure, the county collects payments from applicants, but then it loses money dealing with 150 or so appeals each year. Anyone denied a work card can appeal, and Jacqueline Holloway, director of the Business License Department, said the appeals process ties up five to seven staffers.

But that’s not the only reason for rethinking the requirement.

The job market these days has gotten extremely tough, she added.

“If you have any kind of criminal background, it’s difficult to get back to work,” Holloway said. “It could be seven or 10 years before you get a card.”

The fairness, usefulness and constitutionality of the work card has been debated in Clark County for decades, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada being the most vocal opponent.

Holloway’s suggestion to drop the work card requirement for most jobs rendered the usually loquacious Gary Peck, the Nevada ACLU executive director, speechless for a few seconds.

“I’m really heartened,” Peck eventually said. “That’s a smart way to go. And it is the right thing to do. The ability to go to work is a right and not a privilege. And absent a compelling reason, people should not be forced to go to the government to get permission to work and earn a living.”

Beyond work cards, county departments have been told to comb their budgets, looking for every possible way to increase efficiency and save money.

One answer they came up with is to drop licensing programs and cut social service assistance that the county is not mandated to provide.

It’s time for the state to shoulder those burdens, county officials say.

This would include, for example, the licensing of child care facilities, saving the county about $631,000 annually, which could be turned over the state Health and Human Services Department. Las Vegas is planning a similar handoff.

The county also is considering giving up professional licensing of group homes, halfway houses, and medical offices and labs, leaving all that up to the state as well.

Other cost-cutting suggestions:

• Eliminating the free summer concerts outside the Clark County Government Center, saving $80,000.

• Eliminating weed control, using less fertilizer and pruning trees and mowing grass less frequently in county parks.

• Streamlining some business licensing practices to cut back on processing hours. These include a plan to create a “master license” for resorts that have various types of businesses within their properties. Holloway said this will save staff time because even a mid-sized resort can need 88 licenses for such things as entertainment venues and bars.

• Charging application fees of $500 for every movie or TV production. The county coordinates roughly 30 productions a month, so at that rate the proposed fees would bring in about $200,000 annually.

• Using a flat-rate 50 percent discount on fees for low-income residents who want to participate in for-fee park activities. Steven Corry, assistant director of Parks and Recreation, said the department currently will make up between 10 percent and 90 percent of a fee, depending upon someone’s economic status. It often takes staff a long time to prove someone is eligible for a certain percent discount. Setting the rate at 50 percent would streamline that process, Corry said.

• Reducing overtime in the coroner’s office by having any investigator whose shift is ending hand off his cases to an investigator who still has time left in his shift. And if reports are unfinished at the end of the day, they will just fill in basic information and do a more complete report the next day.

• Instead of building new stations to monitor air quality, the Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management will consider purchasing vacant homes and converting them to monitoring stations.

• Lending staff from the planning department, which is less busy now because construction is down, to the social services department, which is receiving more requests for help.

This is the first time the County Commission has asked departments to present their ideas before the special budget workshops typically held in March. Commissioners and the public are now getting only snapshots and highlights. Line-item budget changes will come out later.

The 2009-10 budget is to be finalized after review by county commissioners this spring and is to take effect July 1.

So far, the commissioners seem pleased with the efforts to save money.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak, a businessman, said he keeps coming back to something his 82-year-old mother said recently about the recession: “ ‘It’s not always going to be high cotton.’ ”

The county should be frugal all the time, he said, because taxpayers don’t have limitless money.

“This kind of cost-saving is something we should do even when times are good,” he said.

People are suffering throughout Clark County, Commission Chairman Rory Reid said, “but if there is a silver lining, (the economic crisis) is forcing government to be more efficient. Our level of focus and scrutiny has increased. It’s what people across Nevada are doing, trying to make it from week to week. And Clark County is a huge bureaucracy, so nobody should be surprised when we have department heads justify their existence.”

Many county practices are done “just because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said. “They get trained in a certain way and there’s a comfort level,” she said. “Some of this stuff has never been looked at like this before.”

County Manager Virginia Valentine said county staff evaluates budgets and looks for ways to be more efficient. This year, however, because millions are expected to be diverted from the county to the state and because sales tax revenue is down and property tax revenue is expected to be flat, some popular programs are likely to fall to the budget ax.

The free summer concerts at the Clark County Amphitheater, for example, draw thousands of families.

“For everything we do, there’s a constituency who wants it,” Valentine said.

Another example: the pollen count program, which could be cut to save $56,000 a year. From March through May, when plants are in bloom, pollen is collected at 10 monitoring stations throughout the valley, then processed in a lab at the Clark County Government Center. Pollen count reports are updated each Wednesday and Friday, giving residents an idea of how much wheezing they might experience.

“If you’re someone who suffers from allergies, that may be important to you,” Valentine said.

But because there is nowhere near enough money to cover everything the county has taken on over the years, everything except mandated, critical services is on the table for the budget cutting discussion, she said.

“Over time, programs get added and added and added,” Valentine said. “And this was a good opportunity for department heads to really take a hard look at those.”