By DR. LARRY MOSES

Last spring the Clark County Board of School Trustees sent district personnel into a panic as the legislature debated the amount of per pupil support the district would receive. The Board predicted massive cuts in staff and programs and prematurely demanded local administrators make the cuts they projected. This threw the lives of many teachers and support staff members into complete chaos.

The tragedy is that all this was politically motivated and completely unnecessary. It was designed to bring pressure on the legislature. When the smoke cleared, there was no reduction in per student support for education from the State; there was in fact an increase.

When the issue was a $400 million shortfall, the district put out a survey and indicated that the first $150 million was easy to find. The Board suggested that citizens should help them find areas where the cuts should be made.

In my column of March 23, using district budget figures, I found $250 million in cuts without touching a single teacher or local support staff salary or local program.

But now that the shortfall is only $150 million, apparently the Board wants to drop the burden on teachers and local support staff.

The loss of revenue the district is now facing is not in State support but due to the fact that Clark County is in an economic depression. Property values are not in decline; they are in free fall. Property taxes will come up short this year and since two thirds of the school budget comes from property taxes, the district will see about a $150 million shortfall. There is no doubt that the district must find some way to make up this shortage.

The comments above are a reaction to an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal dated July 27, 2011. The headline was “School Board May Hire Attorney”. The article indicated that the School Board might approve the hiring of attorney Mark Ricciardi of the firm Fisher and Phillips, which specializes in representing management in labor disputes.

The going rate for Mr. Ricciardi is $360 an hour. Now I am sure Mr. Ricciardi is a fine man and a good attorney. But folks, $360 an hour to fight a battle that will result, with or without him, in the reduction of income for people who make, on the average, less than $30 an hour seems like over kill.

It would also not seem so silly if it were not for the fact that the district already has nine full time attorneys on staff. Since labor negotiations take place every two years one might think that at least one of these staff lawyers would have the training and skill needed to negotiate a settlement with the teachers and support staff of the Clark County School District.

I am aware that everyone thinks everyone else’s job is easy and everyone else is over paid. However, $360 an hour? Come on. What can a man do that is worth $360 an hour?

I must admit there may be some jealousy and envy from a person who has never made much more than $40 dollars an hour in this statement. However, whatever the reason, I cannot relate to that figure. I am sure there are lawyers out there who can rationalize the $360 per hour figure. However, I can guarantee it will not set well with the teacher and support staffer who is seeing his/her less than thirty dollars an hour wage cut.

Mr. Ricciardi will earn more in two weeks than many of the support staff, whose salary he is employed to cut, will earn in a year. This will have the same effect as if the Board members had gone to each employee and stuck a finger in their eye.

No one asked me but… By the time this column is printed the notorious date of August 2, 2011 will have passed and I believe a compromise will have been reached in the Congress. The President will, no doubt, have signed the bill raising the debt ceiling. The only question will be what does the result look like.

You have the extremists on the left screaming that no programs can be touched and extremists on the right just as loudly screaming that there can be no new taxes. Both, the left reluctantly and the right jubilantly conclude that there must be cuts in spending to get this country out of the economic morass that it is presently in.

The issue is not the need for the cuts or the need to raise taxes, the issue is which party will be blamed for the pain that will result. The Democrats want a program that would put off a final resolution until after the election of 2012. The Republicans want a program that would have the problem fester again in the middle of the election season of 2012. Neither party really cares how the issue is resolved as long as they have an advantage when the election of 2012 comes about.

No matter what the temporary resolution is, the problem will not be solved until the politics are removed and a serious effort is made to get our house in order. It is time for statesmen in the Congress to step forward, forget about the elections, and figure out how to solve the problem.

There is little question that we cannot continue with the deficit spending. This is not sound policy. It is also true that unless we take more money into the federal government, we will never be able to pay off the past debt.

It is time for a new chapter to be written in the book Profiles in Courage. Elected officials need to forget what is good for them and do what is good for the nation. If that costs them an election, so be it.