Stimulus failure

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Nevada’s unemployment rate in August was a stunning 13.2 percent, the second-highest in the nation behind Michigan. Nevada’s unemployment rate skyrocketed from August 2008, when it was 7 percent.

Nearly three-quarters of the unemployed in Nevada live in Clark County and nearly 90 percent live in either Clark or Washoe counties, the state’s main population centers.

The Reno Gazette-Journal analyzed state spending of $377 million of federal stimulus money and, in a report published Sunday, found that it will benefit rural counties more than urban counties. The spending per capita in the rural counties is three times the amount the state is spending in Clark and Washoe counties.

The newspaper also found that Nevada hasn’t targeted the counties with the worst unemployment rates. For example, the per capita spending in Lincoln County, which has a 9.2 percent unemployment rate, is more than $3,800. In Lyon County, where the unemployment rate is 15.8 percent, the per capita rate is $64.

“I think it’s pretty obvious there’s no well-thought-out strategic plan,” Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, a member of the Legislature’s stimulus oversight committee, told the newspaper. “We’re just shoving the money out as fast as we can.”

Gov. Jim Gibbons’ handling of the stimulus money has been atrocious. The money is intended to bring jobs to the state, yet Gibbons has failed to spend it in places where it would do the greatest good. The newspaper’s analysis is further proof of that.

There are 135,142 residents of Clark County who are unemployed, compared with 47,419 people from the rest of the state. So why isn’t Clark County, which drives the state’s economy, the focus of the state’s stimulus spending?

The Gibbons administration should have planned for the stimulus long ago, and its failure to do so will result in unnecessary delays in helping pull Nevada out of the recession.