The Farce Awakens: How
a Non-Existent Car Saved North Las Vegas (Maybe)
by Chuck
Muth
December
24, 2015
Once
upon a time, in a land far, far away from downtown North Las Vegas, there was a
desolated piece of virtually uninhabitable property known as the “Apex
Industrial Park.”
Indeed,
the only business outpost there has been a truck stop serving intergalactic travelers
from the planet Utah and places beyond.
When
our story began just a couple short years ago, NLV was on the brink of fiscal
disaster. The municipal government version
of bankruptcy. But then Sith Lord John Lee was elected mayor and embarked
on a seemingly impossible mission to use Apex to rescue his city.
You
see, if Apex could be developed into a huge center of industrial and commercial
activity, the resulting tax revenue would save North Las Vegas from the fiscal
fate Lee’s predecessors left him with.
The
problem: Apex is located so far north of town, in an area with no
infrastructure – water, power, sewer and transportation – that no business or
industry could afford to hang a shingle there.
And
North Las Vegas sure as shootin’ didn’t have the hundreds of millions of
dollars to do the ol’ “if we build it they will come” routine.
In
fact, the situation was so bad that even the state’s nascent and controversial legal
marijuana industry was unable to use the land to open operations. I mean, how bad does it have to be that even
drug dealers can’t find a way to make it work, right?
Enter
Faraday Motors.
Faraday
is an electric car manufacturer - financed by a shadowy Chinese tech industry billionaire
with no auto-making experience - that has yet to, well, manufacture a single
car.
I
mean, what could go wrong there, right?
But
that didn’t stop Emperor Brian Sandoval (R&R-Advertising) from taking a
riverboat gamble on Faraday.
After
all, if the company craps out it will only be Nevada taxpayers on the hook, not
him. And by that time he’ll be out of
office and living the sweet life on the board of directors of some gaming
company or as an executive with R&R Advertising.
In
essence, as best as I can decipher this deal, Faraday Motors has agreed to
front the money to develop Apex and build the infrastructure necessary to make
the outpost habitable by all manner of other businesses and, in the process,
essentially bail out North Las Vegas.
In
return, Nevada taxpayers will be subsidizing Faraday’s “investment” by
absolving it from hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it otherwise would have
to pay – taxes that other Nevada businesses have been paying for years, in some
cases decades, and will continue to pay.
Taxes
that were supposed to be used to pay for things like, um, well, infrastructure.
Bravo
to Lee for seeing the opportunity and “guilting” state elected officials into
giving his town the same sweetheart deal it gave the city of Sparks in northern
Nevada with the Tesla Giga-Giveaway. I
don’t blame him one bit for pursuing this deal.
But
that doesn’t excuse state legislators from taking such a monstrous risk with
OPM – Other People’s Money.
If
the gamble pays off, those legislators will be seen as champs. If not, we, the people, will be seen as
chumps.
And
the beat goes on.
With
that, ladies and gentlemen, I have now completed TEN (10) years as a weekly
columnist in Nevada.
It
all started as a pro bono column for the Nevada Appeal shortly after I moved back
to Carson City from a stint in our nation’s capital in 2005. Muth’s
Truths is now published by about a dozen newspapers throughout the state.
Over
the last ten years – seems like only yesterday – I’ve submitted columns, thanks
to Al Gore and the Internet, each week from every part of the state, as well as
from Washington, DC, Honolulu, Hawaii and everywhere in between, holidays included.
And
in all that time I’ve only completely spaced my Thursday deadline once. Not bad for an old guy on the verge of being
able to hide his own Easter eggs!
It’s
an honor. It’s a privilege.
Thank
you for reading, even though I know we don’t always agree. But more importantly, thank you for caring
enough to be an informed voter. Now let’s
boldly go into the next millennium.
Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year.
(Mr. Muth is
president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. You can reach him at ChuckMuth.com.)
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