WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP
FRIDAY
ON THE MONEY
Unionized Clark County employees packed Tuesday’s commission meeting to show solidarity against an advisory report that calls for cuts to their ever-growing wages. … Commissioner Tom Collins … played to his audience, clad in yellow T-shirts, in declaring pay cuts off the table. “If they’re not worth what you’re paying them, then you should fire them,” Mr. Collins said. …
Personnel costs consume about two-thirds of the county’s $1.37 billion general fund. Commissioners can’t attack their growing revenue shortfall and weather this recession without reducing those costs. …
The idea that every county worker is “worth” an average of $90,000 in pay and benefits each year, especially in this economy, is folly. The county’s entire pay structure is set up to reward seniority, not performance. … The surest way to test Mr. Collins’ philosophy on “worth” is to reduce county employees’ salaries by 15 percent, across the board. How many of these workers would quit their jobs to hunt for work in the battered private sector, when remaining on the county payroll for another five or 10 years would allow them to become fully vested, retire early and collect a lucrative, taxpayer-funded pension for life?
Then, assuming any county employees quit, how many thousands of unemployed Nevadans would stand in line to apply for these positions and their reduced salaries? And what would that say about how much these county positions are “worth”?
