STAND UP AND BE HEARD

Testimony Before The  Nevada Assembly Committee of Government Affairs

(March 27^th, 2009 )

Last Monday I exercised my right as a citizen and traveled to the Grant Sawyer State Building in Las Vegas as did two other somewhat more prominent Laughlin residents, Former Laughlin Town Advisory Board Chair Kathy Ochs and Dick McCall who has been active in civic affairs for many, many years. We were there to support Assembly Bill 383 which would allow Laughlin residents to choose the option to incorporate. Below is the text of the comments I made.

Testimony

Before the Committee of Government Affairs

Nevada State Assembly

23 March 2009

Chairman Kirkpatrick and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to appear before you to testify on AB 383, regarding the incorporation of Laughlin. My name is Jordan Ross; I am a resident of Laughlin and have been actively participating in local civic affairs for six years, primarily as Editor of The Laughlin Herald, an online political column. My views presented today are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of other Laughlin residents.

Laughlin’s institutional status has been an issue of concern to me for some time. I myself authored some minor proposed amendments to the Bylaws of the Laughlin Town Advisory Board in 2008 some of which were subsequently adopted by that body.

There are long standing questions as to what extent elective government should extend vertically to local inhabitants. How small a population should have an elected representative council? In some states, incorporated cities may have no more than a few hundred inhabitants. In our nation’s largest city, New York, over 8 million people have to share the same city government.

How many layers should local government have? In most states two layers seem to suffice, but complex metropolitan areas may have three and in Great Britain some have as many as four layers of local, democratically elected councils.

Whatever may work in one place or another, in Laughlin the overwhelming sentiment is that the current single unitary local government, supplemented by various appointed bodies such as the Laughlin Town Advisory Board and the Laughlin Economic Advisory Committee, no longer meet either the practical or aspirational needs of our township, particularly in light of its geographical isolation.

We have had and continue to have concerns about decisions made for us and priorities set for us. Issues from those as significant as the planning and disposition of the 9000 acres of former Colorado River Commission land to the more mundane issues of which potholes should be fixed first, can all be rationally argued to several logical yet different conclusions.

But the overriding and truly fundamental issue at hand here is our desire to have some control of our own destiny. Large scale services such as planning, public works and parks and recreation can adequately and efficiently serve hundreds of thousands of residents in one urban Clark County region or another that may encompass several different communities. But that cannot be used as a template for a community as distant as ours.

We are not idealists. We are under no illusion that incorporation is a panacea for all our ills nor that it will not bring its own challenges. But as a community we are more than up to that challenge. Our citizens have created a Laughlin Economic Development Corporation to look to the future. We have a significant number of active senior citizens, who not only bring a wealth of significant professional experience that so many of them even now contribute to civic affairs, but who also place no demands on the local job market. We are, as a body of active citizens, convinced that we can rise to the occasion and truly create an innovative municipal government worthy of the new millennium, creating an administration that is genuinely “out of the box”. 

There is also available to any new government entity, a significant body of cutting edge, relevant research in public administration. I include in this, by way of example, the 2002 Callahan Report of the Brookings Institution on franchise funds and service provision as well as the 2003 Volker Report of the National Commission on the Public Service on revitalizing 21^st Century government.

What ever the future may bring, I ask that this Committee in the final analysis, view this as a matter of voting rights and home rule. There may be errors to make in the destiny of Laughlin, but all we ask is that you let us make those errors ourselves.

This concludes my statement Madame Chair. I wish to thank the Committee for it’s time and attention and I appreciate the opportunity to share my views with you. I would be pleased to respond to any questions you and the Committee Members may have.

We welcome the public’s feedback. Please send your Letters To The Editor to editor@laughlinherald.com