EDITORIAL: Sales tax increase sputters at the county commission

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom has rarely seen a tax increase he doesn’t like. But before he tries to burden local residents with higher levies under the guise of attacking homelessness, he should ponder what his progressive fellow travelers have wrought in California.

On Tuesday, Mr. Segerblom withdrew a last-minute proposal to consider raising the county sales tax up to 0.125 percentage points to pay for homeless “services.” That would have increased the overall Clark County sales tax rate — a combination of state and local surcharges that is already among the highest in the nation — to more than 8.5 percent.

A similar increase four years ago raised more than $80 million from consumers during fiscal 2023.

“I personally believe that the people in my district would happily support that,” Mr. Segerblom offered, “if it meant that we could eliminate the” homeless encampments.

But Mr. Segerblom hit reverse at Tuesday’s commission meeting when three of his cohorts — Marilyn Kirkpatrick, Michael Naft and Jim Gibson — were hesitant to support higher taxes. Newly elected commissioner April Becker, who will be the seven-member board’s lone Republican when she takes office in January, would also be unlikely to embrace the proposal, making a majority of the commission opposed.

Notably, while Mr. Segerblom talks about eliminating homeless encampments, he offers his fellow board members no outline for how the millions of new tax dollars would be used to accomplish that goal. In fact, the county needs a regional approach to the problem — a unified attack with the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson — rather than scattershot solutions that have largely been ineffective.

The Golden State provides a cautionary tale about politicians promising to solve the homeless issue if only they can tap a never-ending spigot of taxpayer contributions. California has spent $24 billion combating homelessness since 2019 only to see the number of people living on the streets increase by 20 percent, according to the Hoover Institution. In fact, a large portion of the money was flushed down a black hole, as auditors found this year that “the state lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs.”

Clark County already spends tens of millions a year on the homeless. A new state initiative aims to spend up to $100 million locally to address the issue. Another tax increase on local residents would be wholly inappropriate, particularly for a governmental entity that didn’t break a sweat this year finding $80 million to settle a land use dispute it bungled with a developer.

Mr. Segerblom should mingle with his constituents more often.