‘More for us!’

The disconnect between the public and private sectors was never more apparent than in Friday’s edition of the Review-Journal.

On Page One, the newspaper reported how the nation’s economic slowdown has hit the gaming industry, with Strip service workers suffering reduced hours and layoffs. On the Business section’s cover were stories about Ford Motor Co. closing and selling plants and offering workers buyouts to stem its massive losses, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warning about “the possibilities that the housing market or the labor market may deteriorate to an extent beyond that currently anticipated.”

But tucked away on Page 2B was an article about a very fine Valentine’s Day for Jacob Snow, the general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. The commission’s board not only gave Mr. Snow a 7 percent merit pay raise, but increased his severance package from six months’ pay to a year’s salary — payable in a lump sum — should the smitten officials ever decide to fire him. Mr. Snow now makes nearly $229,000 per year.

What made the largess even more stunning was the people who awarded it. Among the members of the RTC board are Clark County Commissioners Bruce Woodbury and Chip Maxfield and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who have bemoaned the downturn in tax revenue that purportedly has left local governments hurting for cash.

Indeed, the decline in sales tax revenues has a huge impact on the RTC’s mission. Voter-approved sales-tax increases fund improvements to the Las Vegas Beltway and other transit projects — if the revenue isn’t coming in as quickly as anticipated, planned work is delayed.

But working for government means never having to worry about the economic realities that burden the common taxpayer. The country could slip into a second depression, with families begging for sustenance on every streetcorner, and public employees would still be guaranteed generous annual pay raises, golden parachutes and stress-free retirements.

We’re not singling out Mr. Snow. He’s just the most recent public “servant” to highlight an egregious system of compensation where the motto is: “More for us!”

Less than three months ago, the City Council voted to give members a 48 percent pay raise after next year’s elections. A year ago, the Legislature stopped its collective weeping over stretched school and highway funding just long enough to give state judges $30,000 pay raises, even though the judiciary had no shortage of qualified candidates or wave of resignations over poor pay. And on and on.

The justification is always cast as keeping up with peers in other agencies and jurisdictions. When one city manager, department chief or labor group gets a raise, pay hikes for others follow on the grounds that “pay parity” is needed, regardless of whether anyone has really earned it. Compensation ratchets up and up and up.

It’s an effective, offensive ruse on the taxpayer.