More Cops tax hike back before County Commission
The More Cops tax didn’t die with outgoing Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins.
In fact, it might be more alive than ever.
Collins’ former colleagues on Tuesday plan to introduce a revised version of the long-sought sales tax increase, picking the issue up only eight days after the commissioner’s surprise resignation.
The proposed half-cent increase would raise the county’s sales tax rate from 8.1 percent to 8.15 percent, generating an estimated $19.4 million a year for county police departments, including $14.6 million for Metro. The tax would sunset in 2025.
That’s around two-thirds of the total that would have been raised through a failed November proposal and only one-third the sum the county is allowed to collect under state law.
Commissioners could vote to adopt the ordinance as soon as Sept. 1, the same day Gov. Brian Sandoval has set as a deadline to name Collins’ replacement, who must be a Democrat.
Collins, who cited “family matters” in his Aug. 10 resignation letter to the governor, took an all-or-nothing approach to past iterations of the More Cops levy — frequently touting the maximum allowable increase and stubbornly opposing toned-down proposals.
With the self-styled “cowboy commissioner” out of the way, Commissioners Larry Brown and Steve Sisolak — who helped co-engineer the new proposal with Metro Sheriff Joe Lombardo — could have a clear path to cash meant to add more officers to police departments across the county.
Two other commissioners, Lawrence Weekly and Susan Brager, said they were leaning toward supporting the item, but would wait to hear it presented.
Backing from that pair would likely leave the tax a single vote short of the supermajority needed to pass.
Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, a longtime More Cops opponent, said she won’t support the measure, leaving the swing vote in the hands of Commissioner Mary Beth Scow or the as-yet-unnamed gubernatorial appointee.
Scow did not return requests for comment.
None of the county’s current leaders seemed particularly concerned about how it might look to take up the tax so soon after Collins’ departure.
Sisolak said the move wasn’t engineered to coincide with the three-term commissioner’s exit.
Weekly, who has voted to support heftier versions of Tuesday’s suggested tax increase, said it had been in the works for weeks.
At least one elected official, Las Vegas City Councilman Bob Coffin, seemed a little wary of the timing.
Getting half a loaf may be better than getting none, but to Coffin — whose city funds 40 percent of Metro’s operating budget — the move amounts to taking “half of a half-loaf.”
“If it took someone to whimsically change their mind to allow this to go through, I hope they consider the crimes that occurred while they dithered because of our police shortage,” Coffin wrote in a text message Thursday.
State Assembly Minority Leader Marilyn Kirkpatrick, considered one of the front-runners for an appointment to Collins’ seat, said she hadn’t even looked at the latest More Cops proposal and wouldn’t say which way she would lean on the issue.
Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, said the governor hadn’t reached out to talk to her about the job as of Thursday afternoon, but said she “absolutely” would take it.
Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross, widely seen as another top contender for the appointment and the only announced candidate for Collins’ commission post, said he, like Collins, supports the full increase, not a “watered down” version of the measure.
Ross said he hadn’t heard from Sandoval’s office yet either.
A spokeswoman for the governor did not return requests for comment on who he was considering to fill the post and why.
Collins hasn’t made a public appearance since his resignation. He did not return multiple emails, phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
The three-term Democrat left his seat because he was “fed up with the bureaucracy,” a longtime aide said Tuesday.
The aide also predicted he would run for North Las Vegas mayor in 2017.
County officials had no comment on the resignation immediately after it was announced, but a spokesman confirmed Collins’ personal email address was blocked last month by County Manager Don Burnette after the commissioner sent emails that Burnette described as “completely inappropriate and unacceptable.”
Often blunt to the point or abrasive, Collins — who once described himself as a “binge drinker” to the Los Angeles Times — frequently was at odds with fellow commissioners and sometimes attracted attention for impolitic public comments to politicians, journalists, county workers and anyone else in earshot. He landed in hot water last year over expletive-laden remarks directed at Utah-based supporters of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy and his own commission colleagues.
But Collins easily won re-election in 2012, despite being cited for illegally discharging a firearm in the yard at his home — shooting a stubborn tree he was trying to uproot — and for a separate incident involving a bull that escaped from his property, sending a woman to the hospital and netting him two misdemeanor charges.
Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven
