Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels: At least Nevada’s license plates aren’t made in China

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, then warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: Silver State Charter High School student Jessica Jenner, 15, was praised as a hero after seeing her bus driver slumped over a steering wheel and calling 911. That quick thinking might have saved a life. Lyon County school bus driver Deborah Morgan also deserves praise; she was driving past the bus and stopped to stay with the students on it until a substitute driver arrived. A bad situation brought out the best in both.

WOODEN NICKEL: The fact that Nevada’s 150th anniversary license plates are being made in Oregon feels akin to U.S. flags being made in China. They’re still worthy of salutes and respect, but something rings hollow. Nevada law requires that our license plates be produced in-state; Department of Motor Vehicles officials have parsed the definition of “produced.” Nevada lacks the equipment necessary to create the colorful plates, so we’re not necessarily blaming the DMV for its seemingly scofflaw ways. We’d just rather see our license plates be Battle Born than Beaver State Born.

SILVER DOLLAR: The U.S. Department of Labor awarded a grant of more than $1.5 million to Western Nevada College last week. It’s aimed at helping the college expand programs that get “economically distressed” people back to work, WNC President Carol Lucey said. WNC and two other community colleges will offer training in a variety of career fields, such as welding, automotive and Internet technology.

WOODEN NICKEL: Nevada lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the recent recession and has regained just 1,000, according to Nevada Manufacturing Association Executive Director Ray Bacon. He shared that manufacturing industry employment dropped more than 20 percent from its peak of 48,000 jobs in 2005. We’ve been seeing mostly positive economic indicators lately; let’s hope this sector follows suit soon.