Summer air isn’t the only thing feeling Vegas heat

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, July 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

As if it’s not hot enough in Las Vegas!

Here’s a bit more heat.

Just when we thought the Las Vegas City Council’s ego-driven dream of a new city hall building was the latest and, perhaps, only fortunate victim of this crushing economic crisis, along comes a union pension fund riding to the rescue.

Forget all the stories of the gory, glory days that come to mind — courtesy of the Teamsters Pension Fund. The one thing we should remember is that when the Teamsters helped build this city, they created thousands and thousands of jobs and an economic engine that, while slowed down of late, can’t be stopped.

Unlike the model of the ’50s, the Laborers Union’s efforts to reprise the lending largesse of their brethren will not create an economic engine or contribute to decades of new growth in this valley. On the contrary, it will create some construction jobs for a couple of years and then, not surprisingly, an urge of city government to fill the brand new and much more expensive offices with government workers.

In and of itself that might not be a bad idea, but because the Clark County Government Center — filled with government workers doing practically the same thing as their city colleagues — will be just a stone’s throw away, don’t you think it prudent to at least consider the possibility of combining city and county government into one building?

That would mean just one council, and one business license department and one parks and recreation department, and one of every other kind of bureaucratic agency for which there are two now. Think of the taxpayer dollars that would be saved by consolidating the governments. Think what would happen if the county did to the north of Sahara, or the city did to the south of Sahara, what the two governments are doing now and have been doing forever. Think of the waste that will go wanting, the duplication that will disappear and the government that will go away if we make two governments into one.

At the very least, there should be a real study conducted — yet again — so that voters will know what this new city hall will really cost.

And if the unions want to invest in projects that will create jobs for their members and contribute to the growth of Las Vegas, I say: Good for you guys, and open yourselves for business. I know plenty of people in this town who can’t get a bank to answer the phone. Your money, your support and the quality of your members’ work product will be welcome across this valley.

 •••

Hot weather contributes to hot water, so the question is: Why do I want to stick my toe in? But I have to comment on Jon Ralston’s column in Friday’s Las Vegas Sun in which he pulled a classic Detective Columbo routine with regard to the boiling bubbles percolating around Nevada’s junior U.S. senator, John Ensign.

Like Jon and John, I would love for this whole sordid affair to go away. But it won’t. Not until our good senator acts like he has learned from history and the history of others who have been in similar predicaments.

Whoever told Sen. Ensign this would all go away if he read a statement to the media and then clammed up in front of a gaping world did him a grave disservice. Especially when information comes out in dribs and drabs and each time it does, it gets worse.

I don’t know what John Ensign should do next, but something tells me he needs to stand up and answer any and every question that comes his way. Then he can sit down and figure out where he goes from there. If he doesn’t, then all those concerned about laws being broken — I am not suggesting there are any but there are plenty of folks who are — will have a field day at his expense. That is happening right now and at some point even his C Street colleagues will throw the book at him in order to cut their losses.

And this doesn’t even come close to quelling the anger of a husband scorned. Obviously $96,000 wasn’t enough to keep him quiet, so who knows what it will take to fix that problem?

The bottom line here is that only John Ensign can clean up the mess he has made — a mess that is getting all over Nevada the longer it remains untended.

•••

Another mess that may not go away anytime soon, but needs to, is at UNLV.

The state of Nevada, that includes Reno and the rest of the North, cannot survive without a strong, vibrant and growing Southern Nevada. We are the economic engine that powers both the North and the South and the cow counties in between whether they like to admit it or not — and they don’t.

And the engine that is Las Vegas will never produce enough output to do the job it must unless it grows responsibly and properly over the next few decades. And that won’t and can’t happen unless we have a strong, growing and respected higher education institution from which we will graduate people who will help us grow and by which we will attract the quality of people who will move here to help us prosper.

Whatever happened between the Board of Regents, the chancellor and UNLV President David Ashley, it appears that chapter is closed except for some messy cleanup that most certainly will occur. By the way, just for the record, I had significant dealings with Dr. Ashley on behalf of UNLV and he was attentive, encouraging and forceful in his leadership. Was he all things to all people? Apparently not, but he served the school well as far as I am concerned. Especially when he fought at the Legislature to save UNLV from a stacked deck of budget cuts that favored the northern schools over those where most of the people and most of the needs reside. If anything, I would have fired him if he didn’t speak out!

What the regents — where were they in those budget cuts? — have to do now is get a new president in place right away because life is too difficult at UNLV to wait however long it will take to do a national search. (If anyone in their right mind would come anyway right now.) There are talented people who are available to UNLV as we speak, who understand what UNLV needs and who have demonstrated the passion, commitment and leadership to pick up the pieces and get us moving again.

There are too many good things happening and about to happen at UNLV to let the opportunity to achieve greatness slip by the board just because the folks at the top can’t get along or, worse, can’t make a decision.

Assuming I am right that the entire state depends upon a growing and glowing UNLV, everyone has the same future at stake. Who wants to take the risk that I am not?

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.