MUTH’S TRUTHS

There was an EXCELLENT story in yesterday’s Las Vegas Sun by reporters Jeff German and Mike Trask pointing out the unsustainable pay and benefit packages local government workers in Nevada receive, especially their pension benefits.

“Start with a very generous public payroll on which one of every seven city and county employees made more than $100,000 last year,” the reporters write. “Add piles of overtime, then mix in enviable retirement benefits that allow scores of municipal employees to continue drawing their salary, or close to it, for the rest of their lives. What you have, fiscal analysts believe, is a recipe for a very dark financial cloud on the horizon, one looming ahead for governments throughout Southern Nevada.”

This is a “must read” story for every fiscal conservative in Nevada. Frankly, it’s even more important for fiscal liberals, but as we all know, being a liberal means never having to worry about how to pay for things.

The one glaring omission in the story is the fact that all those overly-generous pay and benefit packages which could one day bankrupt the state are due primarily to the collective bargaining process at the local government level…a process which some very mistaken Republicans in the Legislature want to extend to state government workers, as well. I guess their thinking is that if we’re going to go to budget hell in a hand-basket anyway, we may as well make it a fast trip.

Thanks, but no thanks. Time to wake up and smell the rancid collective bargaining coffee before it’s too late. Instead of extending it to state workers, it’s time to rescind it for local government workers.

Posted on April 16th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada