Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

Working together

County, cities should be exploring ways to consolidate government services

State lawmakers last year passed a bill requiring local governments in Clark and Washoe counties to study consolidating services. The governments have until Sept. 1 to send reports to the Legislature outlining the potential of working together.

Although the discussion has been centered on individual services, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said he is in favor of consolidating all of the local governments in Clark County.

“I’m looking for the whole kit and caboodle,” Goodman said. “I personally think it’s the only way that Southern Nevada is going to bail themselves out of these financial woes.”

As Dave Toplikar reported last week on

lasvegassun.com, Goodman asked City Manager Betsy Fretwell to develop plans for partial or full consolidation of services that could be presented to the leaders of Clark County, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City.

“I think that the Legislature should look at complete consolidation of Southern Nevada, with one government, with one set of ordinances,” Goodman said, adding that he wanted to see “uniformity” in Clark County.

Goodman said in the case of a major emergency, there could be a serious problem communicating between the various governments.

“It will be like the Tower of Babel,” he said. “We have a sheriff, who is in charge of the unincorporated area of the county (and) the city of Las Vegas, we’ve got a police chief in North Las Vegas, we’ve got a police chief in Henderson, we’ve got public information offices in each one of these places, we’ve got managers for the city of Las Vegas, managers for the county — it’ll be chaos.”

Other members of the Las Vegas City Council expressed support for consolidation, but differed about how much of it they want to see. Although we wish he would have proposed it before embarking on an expensive new City Hall building, Goodman is on the right track. The region should be working toward full consolidation. There are already examples of how it can work countywide — the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Regional Transportation Commission and the Clark County Regional Flood Control District.

The reality is that putting the governments together immediately won’t be politically tenable in the near future. Many issues among the municipalities need to be worked out, and local leaders and the voters they represent would need to get behind the effort.

In the meantime, however, Las Vegas and Clark County should lead the way and start working toward full consolidation. We’ve seen for decades how consolidation of Las Vegas and Clark County police services has worked so well after the creation of Metro Police.

So far, the city and county are looking at ways to consolidate parks, information technology, animal control, purchasing, business licensing and television production. They are also considering how to coordinate fire departments, which could help ease the high overtime costs of firefighters.

Consolidation makes sense — it should save money and increase efficiencies in government. As well, we hope Goodman continues to champion the idea, using his considerable persuasive skills. But this is more than just about the mayor. He needs help with this endeavor, and that means other local officials will have to cast aside politics-as-usual, forget the turf wars and simply do what’s right for their constituents.

This has been one of the worst fiscal crises ever facing Southern Nevada’s local governments. It’s time that local governments rein in their labor costs — including salaries and generous benefits — and consolidate services and governments where it makes sense. Nothing less will do.

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