After years of prolifigate tax and spend, Nevada’s time of reckoning has arrived with a virtual deluge of chickens, all returning home at the same time. Now is not the time to be spreading more feed around the barnyard.
Legislators tell us with a straight face that “Everything is on the table”. Let’s hope so.
Citizens of our state can look around and evaluate for themselves: “Is what I see really NECESSARY?” In other words, there are NEEDS and there are WANTS in government as well as any other endeavor.
The purposes of government are to protect us and our property from violence and to protect us against fraud by others. All else is really window dressing.
Here is a short list of things that should be on the table; what do you think?
1. Nevada wastes a lot of money each year via the Department of Motor Vehicles. As it is now, an army of state employees slowly processes payments of dollars for a cheap piece of paper, a process that is repeated every few years. Driving safety plays no part in the transaction, and it recurs far too often. Nevada driver’s licenses should be for a term of 10 years, with the requirement that they can be renewed with a new photo at any DMV office. This alone would save a boatload of money EVERY YEAR, as DMV facilities and personnel could be reduced to the point where hundreds of thousands of citizens would no longer be required to waste hundreds of thousands of hours of their lives.
2. An unmistakable statement from the Nevada Legislature, making clear the fact that laws passed at the federal level that exceed the enumerated powers granted the Congress, are null, void and unenforceable in Nevada. This is our right as citizens of the United States and Nevada, and the clear duty of our employees, the Legislature, established in part to protect us from the tyranny of an over-reaching federal behemoth. It’s time to stand up to those in Washington, D.C. who have forgotten or don’t care what the Tenth Amendment says.
3. Learn what a prison is for, and operate the system they comprise accordingly. Lock away only those offenders who are violent and pose a danger to the public. When, according to some studies, two-thirds of incarcerated felons are in prison for possession and/or use of drugs, something is drastically wrong with spending priorities. This would not only allow for a smaller, more efficient “corrections” system, but also keep thousands of families off welfare.
4. Discontinue participation in Medicaid. This program has been a consistently increasing drain on scarce resources for decades, with no end in sight. In fact, as the spectre of Obamacare comes closer, the increased costs of this well-intentioned program will only continue to increase, probably at a skyrocketing speed most Nevadans are unwilling and unable to fund. To compound the problem, this program is now considered a career choice by many. It has to go.
5. Ignore Davis-Bacon mandates in contracting. In short, award contracts to the lowest qualified bidder when public works projects are let. The quality of the final product is not dependant on the pay rate of the people performing the construction. Continue the release of funds as stages of work are completed satisfactorily. Hold contractors to completion dates.
Some will see these points as radical, silly, or even impossible. But when the State of Nevada has it’s back to the wall, as it does now, drastic measures have to be the norm, and these fit that requirement.
We are wallowing deep in a recession that has, and will continue, to blunt efforts to turn our economy in a positive direction for the foreseeable future; with the national deficit and debt already heading for the stars, also with no end in sight, employment is very unlikely to return to a level that will satisfy continuing “business as usual” in our state. Jobs that generate paychecks and tax receipts aren’t going to be there anytime soon. We ignore that at our peril.
Nevada needs to protect itself, and I believe that these proposals are a good starting point for substantial savings.
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