Reaching across boundaries

Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

A report released last week by the Brookings Institution offers some good advice for Southern Nevada mayors and county commissioners who will be making decisions about how to spend federal stimulus money.

Authors of the report advise that elected leaders consider the big picture before making final decisions.

The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization, has for years studied the relationship between local issues — right down to the neighborhood level — and the issues affecting greater metropolitan areas.

Its conclusion is that good planning at the metropolitan level often either solves local issues or prevents them from arising in the first place. To that end, the report’s authors are encouraging mayors and elected county officials to collaborate with one another before spending any discretionary stimulus money.

Southern Nevada’s metropolitan level would include Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Clark County, and on some issues Boulder City and Mesquite.

Also in this mix would be the Clark County School District, UNLV, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Regional Transportation Commission and the state government. All of these entities have issues that overlap and affect city and county issues — issues that could result in needed public projects that put large numbers of people to work.

“Metropolitan areas are the true engines of the national economy,” the report says in warning policymakers away from an abundance of unrelated, provincial projects.

Success through collaboration is what Brookings urges, and the organization highlights the Mid-America Regional Council, the regional planning agency for metropolitan Kansas City, as a fine example. Since December this agency has been working with state and local jurisdictions in building a list of projects that could be funded through the stimulus bill and benefit the entire region.

Brookings says this kind of cooperation not only helps regions, but also serves “the good of the nation.”

We would like to see Southern Nevada’s elected officials take this approach.