EDITORIAL: Harsh reality for North Las Vegas

Even the most uninformed taxpayer could see this coming from 10 miles away. North Las Vegas doesn’t have enough money to pay its public safety unions contracted pay raises. If the unions insist on keeping the raises, there will be layoffs.

Duh.

The city has no other options. Although new Mayor John Lee and a new city management team have tried mightily to work with the bargaining groups, to show good faith and prove the cupboards are bare, the unions haven’t exactly rushed to help taxpayers. And so, facing an $18 million deficit and an April 15 deadline to submit a tentative budget to the state, City Manager Jeff Buchanan served up super-sized portions of reality at two closed-door employee meetings Wednesday.

As reported by the Review-Journal’s James DeHaven, Mr. Buchanan told public safety unions to sign a $7.7 million settlement providing smaller pay raises by April 15 or suffer job losses in 10 to 20 percent across-the-board spending cuts.

Predictably, the unions indicated they wouldn’t sign. They had prevailed in court after the city tried to freeze the pay raises under an emergency declaration two years ago, resulting in a $25 million judgment. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

North Las Vegas Firefighters Association President Jeff Hurley now favors a choice not offered by Mr. Buchanan: a state takeover of the city. If the state puts North Las Vegas into receivership, newly appointed managers would have the authority to increase property taxes, a step the City Council wisely won’t take, given the ongoing hardships of residents who are underwater on their mortgages and business owners trying to hang on.

“If these are the tactics the city’s going to use, I think it’s time for the state to step in,” Mr. Hurley said.

Why would the police and fire unions favor such an untested, unprecedented action? Because, as this page has pointed out time and again, the vast majority of North Las Vegas police officers and firefighters do not live in North Las Vegas. If the state takes over and raises city taxes, public safety workers won’t pay. They’ll only collect.

The unions’ sympathy for unwashed taxpayers brings tears to our eyes.

There won’t be anything surgical about these cuts. They’ll be battlefield amputations. At least there’s a chance they’ll save the patient.