Counties could cooperate

Lots of folks over the years have said that Douglas and Carson should cooperate when it comes to attracting business and industry.

The competition between the two counties has on occasion ended up doing as much damage as either county benefited.

Odds are if the counties were cooperating instead of competing we wouldn't have a $24.7 million manmade plateau at the northern entrance to Douglas County.

A study commissioned by Carson City shows how much the competition between the two has cost the two governments.

It's pretty simple really, take $35 million in incentives, add $45 million in sales tax revenue and you've got $80 million the counties could have raised instead of the $10 million they got in sales taxes.

That assumes Costco, or Walmart, or any of the box stores Carson and Douglas have attracted over the last 14 years would be there had it not been for the incentives. The incentives definitely wouldn't have been there had the counties not been competing.

The study points out that Douglas does not benefit from the increased sales tax, which is true. We are one of nine counties whose budget is guaranteed by the state. We get the same amount of money no matter how much sales tax we raise, which lately isn't much.

But the threat that the counties could be left to fend for themselves was real during the early '90s fair-share debate and prompted Douglas to increase its sales tax revenues.

Cooperation between the two governments is one way we could go to increase the attractiveness of both counties to a variety of projects, but there is another. That would be to remove government from the economic development business altogether, and let the market determine where the best opportunities lie.