WINNEMUCCA —  When fiscal conservatives talk about being careful with money – they mean their own.   Your money they’re going to spend like it’s going out of style.

I offer up the following example.

The Humboldt County Commissioners have proposed hiring a planning director for the county. I imagine planning directors don’t come cheap, especially not ones with a background in engineering, which the commissioners want.

Depending on education and experience, we might pay upwards of $100,000/year in salary and benefits – or more – for this planning director.

They offered up little justification for this  expenditure other than their opinion the scope of the proposed Jungo Rd. landfill might have been understood earlier if there had been a planning director.

In essence, the horses are out so the commissioners want to pay  $100,000/year to shut the barn door.

The problem here, really, is timing.

For a month now local government has been warned the cost for many state programs could be shifted to local government.  As it’s worded in the governor’s State of the State Executive Summary: the state would provide the service and local government will pay for it.

That amuses me.

If all the services listed on the governor’s proposal are actually shifted to local government, it may cost upwards of a $1 million over a two-year period.

Some of those programs must be done by NRS statute: the training and licensing of EMS personnel, pre-sentencing investigation reports, health inspections and licensing of restaurants, etc.

But many social services for the elderly, handicapped, blind, and disadvantaged children may fall to the wayside if local government can’t pay the bill.

My question is thus:  what are we going to have to give up to have this planning director?

Actually, that’s not the question.  The question is: what will the elderly, blind and handicapped have to do without so the commissioners can have their planning director?

Would a planning director be nice?  I suppose. Lots of things would be nice in a healthy economy.

But as Commissioner Tom Fransway is fond of saying whenever the commissioners are asked for more money, “Now is not the time.”