State may take over North Las Vegas

North Las Vegas residents have paid enough.

They have the highest property tax rates in Clark County, and they’ve been hit the hardest by the housing meltdown. Taxpayers are burdened by unsustainably high salaries and benefits for North Las Vegas employees, even as residents struggle to support themselves and their community’s businesses.

These citizens have endured more than their share of economic pain over the years.

Yet they might be ordered to pay even more — with no direct say in the matter.

The city’s operating budget is out of balance to start the new fiscal year, with a deficit of $8.6 million. A budget balanced through personnel layoffs was passed in May, but judges reversed some of those pink slips, creating a financial emergency that could require the state to take over North Las Vegas’ finances.

The state Department of Taxation has not had to put a local government into receivership since 2005, when rural White Pine County nearly went bankrupt. The state has never taken over a government the size of North Las Vegas, which has a total budget of roughly half a billion dollars and a population of more than 200,000.

Should the state step in, it has sweeping powers. The Department of Taxation could raise city taxes across the board, without a direct vote of the City Council, the Legislature or the citizens of North Las Vegas.

That’s the course the state took in White Pine County, in addition to ordering some spending cuts. Temporary tax hikes on sales, hotel rooms and government services were levied to build a reserve fund. Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of taxation without representation,.

It’s telling that a state bureaucracy has the authority, under a fiscal emergency, to raise taxes on the public, but does not have the ability to unilaterally modify or void the public employee union contracts that helped create the emergency in the first place. Taxpayers enjoy no protections under contract law. The public is always expected to pay more.

That’s unfair. If the state steps in to raise taxes, voters need to be able to hold someone accountable — including themselves. After all, they’re partially responsible for this mess, consistently voting onto the City Council members who sell their souls to unions and make lousy fiscal decisions. A new City Hall and a new sewage treatment plant look like serious liabilities right about now.

North Las Vegas appears to have an agreement with firefighters on pay cuts that would cut the budget deficit to $6.6 million. Other public employee unions, especially police, need to make more compensation concessions. The council will consider an amended budget July 20 that will further reduce expenses. Good.

But whatever happens — state oversight or not — the public shouldn’t be forced to pay more. North Las Vegas residents have paid enough.