‘Put something on paper’

The state’s highway construction funding shortfall has Carson City stuck in legislative gridlock.

With less than two weeks remaining in the regular legislative session, lawmakers and lobbyists seem most concerned with who shouldn’t pay for badly needed freeway improvements in the Las Vegas Valley. Democrats insist that diverting existing revenue streams will hurt other public services. The gaming industry, knowing the pot of gold generated by hotel room taxes is ripe for a raid, is telling anyone who’ll listen that casinos shouldn’t be on the hook for highways, never mind the strain tourists and casino workers put on Interstate 15 and the Southern Nevada transportation grid every day.

Lawmakers have known since last summer that Southern Nevada’s congested highways would define the 2007 session. The Nevada Department of Transportation needs to widen most every stretch of major highway in Clark County, but the taxes that pay for those improvements won’t bring in enough money over the next eight years to pay for all the work.

Because of rising construction costs and NDOT’s record of poor project prioritization — favoring extravagant Northern Nevada projects over bare-bones improvements in Clark County — the agency needs lawmakers to identify billions of dollars in new funding to bring Las Vegas highways to where they should have been five years ago.

Rising gasoline prices are compounding the serious economic consequences of freeway gridlock. Commutes and commercial routes already plagued by costly delays grow more expensive by the week. Visitors are spending less time in restaurants, retail stores and casinos and more time stuck in traffic. Because our freeways are choked to the point of asphyxiation, the valley’s quality of life and cost of living are worsening. The driving public and the tourism industry can’t wait two more years for a solution.

The issue should have been the Legislature’s highest priority. Now adjournment is days away, yet no viable plan is even close to a vote. Instead of having public hearings on a wide range of proposals, elected officials are still engaged in closed-door horse trading.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has offered the only sensible plan to date: He wants to divert a portion of future growth in sales taxes on motor vehicles, live entertainment taxes and hotel room tax revenues into the highway trust to underwrite $2.5 billion in bonds for major freeway improvements. The plan would enable work on I-15 to begin this year and conclude by perhaps 2012.

But Democrats and gaming industry figures have dedicated their energy to tearing down the governor’s proposal, which answers the state’s most pressing need without increasing taxes.

“I would challenge any of them, if they think this process is easy, give me their plan, give me their proposals,” Gov. Gibbons said Monday. “Don’t be critical of us. Put something on paper.”

Exactly. And Southern Nevada lawmakers should be out front on the highway funding issue and developing a plan that can, at minimum, win regional support in the Legislature.

The doomsday rhetoric coming from Nevada Resort Association and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority officials over future room tax diversions smacks of exaggeration. They’d have lawmakers believe that tourism and convention business will leave the valley if the authority doesn’t have more than $200 million per year in room tax revenues to spend. They’re claiming that canceling a $900 million upgrade to the Las Vegas Convention Center — which yields less than 90,000 square feet of new exhibition space — would do more damage to the valley’s economy than worsening congestion on I-15.

In fact, though, the visitors authority, in particular, has more money than it knows what to do with.

Future room tax revenue growth should be part of the state’s highway funding solution. Diverted sales tax revenue from vehicle sales and repairs would also help. And lawmakers should commit the state’s entire general fund surplus, which could exceed $300 million by this summer, to the highway trust.

Now’s the time for big ideas to be made public and debated. Now’s the time for Gov. Gibbons to get his allies in the Legislature to get his proposal into bill form and moving forward. Now’s the time for leadership from Las Vegas lawmakers. Right now — not two or four years hence — is the time to ease the Las Vegas Valley’s highway gridlock.