This Just In - Blue Ribbon Task Force “Crisis List” Shrinks
May 3rd, 2007Back in 1995, Nevada’s Department of Transportation (DOT) stopped performing “Benefit-Cost” analysis on its proposed projects because traffic became so bad in Las Vegas that powerful, senior government officials in Reno and Carson City became concerned all traffic projects would be in Las Vegas forever more.
However, after more than a decade of substituting subjective political prioritization for objective methods, Nevada taxpayers find themselves saddled with the embarrassing “Bridge To Nowhere” - a $600-million boondoggle between Reno and Carson City chosen over a $120-million alternative that would have offered the same improvement in traffic and safety.
Recent pressures to examine our transportation construction processes more closely - driven by a rapid increase in borrowing, which has increased the percentage of road construction revenue required to pay off debt each year - led to Governor Guinn’s “Blue Ribbon Commission” recommending big tax hikes, and Legislative Democrats grabbing the “big headlines” the first week of the session by impulsively recommending even bigger tax hikes totalling $2-billion.
The Republican response has been more thoughtful and deliberative. New performance measures for DOT have been designed and implemented, courtesy of (Democrat) State Controller Kim Wallin (a 20-year CPA acquaintance of mine). Governor Gibbons has replaced the director of DOT, and she has promised to start doing “Benefit-Cost” analysis again. Local government project cost sharing is being explored.
This week, the first “Benefit-Cost” analysis results were released. A partial list has been made public, including the news that one of the Guinn Blue Ribbon Commission’s “crisis projects” ranks so low it is actually negative. Clearly, that project is no crisis. And if the old DOT, under the old Governor and director, padded their report with this one… were there others? Does the Blue Ribbon Commission have any credibility at all?
Another revelation: the “I-15 North” project, currently slated to be kicked off with $170-million of surplus funds, ranks lower in priority than the “I-15 South” project. The highest ranked project, US 95, is scheduled to be completed this summer.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Thank you so much for this information.
I think sometimes you should be a reporter. It seems for some reason the newspapers and local TV stations are so lazy in finding and publishing this information. The “Benefit-Cost Analysis” is a common sense approach. One would think that it would be news worthy that one project in this “crisis” population has a negative ratio.
When that recent polling came out, it showed that the people and Bob Beers are often on the side of the fence. The elite and their media pets probably looked down upon the people as being stupid and selfish.
Thanks for providing the leadership that the people are craving.