Give it away — it’s only tax money

Every couple of years, Clark County’s municipal employees hold an election, choosing seven people to serve staggered terms during which these representatives are expected to go before the public on the bureaucrats’ behalf, extracting from the general populace certain sums collected under threat of armed force. Those sums are called “taxes,” and they are used to provide the county employees with jobs, compensation, benefits — pretty much anything and everything they think to ask for, whether actually called for in any written “employment contract,” or not.

These representatives of the county’s municipal employees, responsible only to keep the municipal employees happy, are called “county commissioners.”

What’s that? We got that wrong? The seven members of the Clark County Commission are actually elected by the populace at large to do the bidding of the taxpayers? The commissioners’ main fiduciary responsibility is actually to those voters, to make sure their hard-earned tax dollars are spent as frugally as possible? The county commissioners are supposed to retain firm contract negotiators to get the taxpayers the best possible deal on their municipal services?

Well, somebody had better straighten out the characters currently occupying top floor offices in that fancy red sandstone Temple to Government over in the old railroad yards, because they seem to have gotten the wrong idea, entirely.

Back in late 2006 and early 2007, negotiations were stalled on a new county labor contract after the old deal expired in July. When a deal was finally reached, it included a provision that workers who had left county employ during the eight months after the old contract expired could get lump sums of money representing the difference between what they’d really made in county service in late 2006, and the 3 percent higher salaries they would have been paid under the new contract.

Mind you, county taxpayers weren’t going to get anything for that money. It was a gift to people who had already quit their county jobs. But the union wanted the clause in there, and they got it. All the former workers had to do was notify the county by certified mail by April 2, 2007, that they wanted the money.

Yes, the contract was that specific. The union sought and agreed to that language.

Guess what? About 150 former county workers now say no one told them about that deadline, so they failed to ask for those bonuses in time.

The contract doesn’t say county staff were under any obligation to track down those former workers and tell them about the gift their former union had negotiated for them, according to a memo on the issue prepared by County Manager Virginia Valentine.

So on Tuesday, the seven Clark County commissioners — mindful of their fiduciary responsibility to carefully guard the public treasury — told those 150 former employees, men and women who had been well-compensated, who had already received all the benefits and pensions owed them, “Tough luck” — right?

Wrong. In fact, the County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to pay as much as $130,000 to former workers who are not owed the money under the terms the union asked for.

Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said he was supporting the giveaways “out of a sense of fairness.” Commissioner Lawrence Weekly argued, “If they worked, they earned it” — despite the fact the workers have already received every penny they agreed to when they took the jobs.

The commissioners all own houses. Surely they could raise $130,000 among them by taking out second mortgages on those homes. If they feel the former workers’ grievance is so compelling, let them do so.

But by what right do they give away anyone else’s hard-earned money, in violation of the duly negotiated union contract?

Or is it everyone else who’s confused about who these commissioners really serve?