Sunday, May 16, 2010 | 2 a.m.
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What good is vision if we refuse to see?
What ails Nevada is not just our sense of vision. And it isn’t our sense of hearing, either, just because we refuse to listen. If you want to talk about our sense of touch, we could use phrases such as “out of touch” to better describe how public policy and public services don’t intersect in this state.
I could talk about all the senses, but you should have gotten my meaning by now. What I think is lacking in this debate about a vision for Nevada is, indeed, a lack of sense. That would be common sense.
By the time you read this, the Nevada Vision Stakeholder Group still won’t be in agreement on a preliminary report issued by its consultant last week. The group is to help chart the future of Nevada, creating a combined vision for Nevada’s future and how we all, together, will get there. The fact is that we need to talk about what kind of state we want to be when we grow up, what kind of investments in our future we will need to make and how we can raise the money necessary to make those investments pay dividends.
This conversation, by the way, is nothing new.
For decades there have been people in Nevada — Republicans, Democrats, independents, those who drink coffee and those who drink tea — who have tried to convince the electorate that this state was heading down a path of ruin, solely because we refused to believe that the good times might someday stop rolling.
I admit it is difficult to worry about how bad things can get when our brief history as a modern city has seen barely a blip in an otherwise constant pattern of success and more success. Why save for a rainy day, people would ask, when we live in a place where it doesn’t rain? (Lack of rain is the subject for another day.)
What the preliminary report does do, however, is give people a pretty clear choice about what kind of Nevada they and their families want to live in at a time of making difficult choices. And that is new.
Let me explain. For decades we have heard the constant refrain about Nevada being a low-tax state and, therefore, an enticement for people to move here by the thousands, fueling the incredible growth that we have become known for across the country. Every time the issue of paying for education, roads, social services or even diversification of the economy came up, the answer was always the same: Let someone else pay for it.
Whether it was our tourists, our newest residents or some other source, as long as those of us who live and work here weren’t asked to pay our fair share or any share, life would just go on.
There was always this false sense of security that was, in part, promoted by our major industries — tourism and gaming — that gaming taxes and sales taxes would carry the day. In short, if Nevada takes care of the gaming industry, the industry will take care of Nevadans.
It has become painfully clear that the gaming industry can barely take care of itself, let alone pay for the billions of dollars in government services to which we have become accustomed and for which we have continuing expectations. That is, a proper public education, a transportation system that actually allows us to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time, parks and recreation opportunities for our children, libraries, health care for those in need, and whatever other government services that separate us from cities less “civilized.”
Although that expectation grows exponentially in periods of great economic distress — the time we are trying to live through right now — what hasn’t changed is the “vision” of those who will be asked to react.
Let’s forget about the owners of the other paper, the one that serves as a delivery vehicle for the Las Vegas Sun. However bad their editorial policy is for our community, it is, at least, consistent. They hate government at all levels and, therefore, they hate the taxes that pay for that government. What they hate even more is the thought that some small piece of their money will stay in Nevada, where they make it, instead of being shipped to Arkansas, where they live.
Let’s concentrate, instead, on the people who move to Las Vegas to put down roots, raise families and who try to make this fascinating city their home. They are the folks who have the most to gain from the work of the Nevada Vision Stakeholder Group and, by definition, the most to lose.
I believe it is still true that parents want their children to grow up with better circumstances, better opportunities and better pathways to success than they had.
To do that, education has to be first-rate, the job market has to be strong and the quality of life has to be competitive with other areas of the country, otherwise the kids will leave and the hard work will be less rewarding.
What I hope the Nevada Vision Stakeholder Group will envision is a Nevada that will diversify its economy, upgrade its educational product and make this state an enviable place to live in the future, and not a place that “used to be” a good place to live.
Yes, success requires investment. And that means everyone who lives here has to pay something, however small, into the investment kitty — if only to feel like they have a stake in our future. Being at the bottom of every quality-of-life list is not the way to grow our community or make it enticing for our kids to make it their home, too.
And yet there are people in this state who will tell us that the status quo works just fine. Well, those are the folks who have theirs or have their families someplace else. They do not care about this state and never have cared about you.
If we want to see a Nevada that puts a premium on good jobs, secure futures and upwardly mobile economic lives, then we have to envision the kind of state that allows all of that to happen.
We have seen all too dramatically what doesn’t work. No taxes, no diversification and no investment in education have put us at the bottom of the list of states that will recover from this depressing recession.
There is a better, healthier and more prosperous vision for Nevada. Just ask those in elected office and those who want to lead us what they are doing about getting us there.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
