Editorial: Zeroing in on Washington to bring our money back home

Sunday, July 5, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Imagine contributing to a potluck, then not getting in line to enjoy the food. Or bringing a gift to a holiday exchange but not picking one for yourself. Or pitching in on the cost of a hotel room so your friends can use the fancy pool, then staying home to watch TV.

By some reasoning, you’d be considered thoughtful and selfless, contributing to the greater good without personal gain or enjoyment.

But let’s say you’re giving money to the federal government, in taxes and fees, and the government sets aside some of that money as grants to return to states for public projects and services. All the state has to do is ask for the money and offer a good reason why it deserves it.

Nevada is awful at the science and art of grantsmanship. In this government cash giveaway, we stand idly with our hands in our pockets. In fact, for eight of the past 10 years, Nevada has ranked 50th of 50 states for snagging federal money and putting it to use back home. The other two years, we were 49th.

By some estimates, Nevada could qualify for more than $500 million in federal funds that we’re ignoring. We’re cheating ourselves out of our own money, letting it go to others.

Now the good news: With Gov. Brian Sandoval and state lawmakers sounding the bell, we’re waking up to these potential windfalls, and as a state, organizing a better way to go after the money.

The 2015 Legislature passed a law — not a policy direction or a feel-good resolution, but an outright law — that created the Nevada Advisory Council on Federal Assistance. Giving the council such a stature means no future governor can come along and dismantle it in an anti-federal government fit.

The council’s marching orders are to develop legislative and executive recommendations for how to aggressively target Nevada’s rightful share of federal grant funds. These aren’t to be confused with the many benevolent grants offered by private, nonprofit foundations to local, nonprofit service organizations. The state’s goal is to go after the big money in Washington that can be awarded only to states, which in turn might keep it or send it downstream to local government agencies.

The creation of this bureaucratic middleman promises to catapult Nevada into the grants game, offering accountability, assistance and resourcefulness in fishing for federal money. Among the top-drawer organizations that support this effort are the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Council for a Better Nevada, the Nevada Community Foundation and, at UNLV, the Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West.

Nevada’s lackluster effort in landing federal grants has been a source of complaint for years from legislative committees, task forces and watchdog organizations.

In 2008, then-Gov. Jim Gibbons established the Sage Commission to review the state’s finances. Among its conclusions in 2010 was that Nevada had no apparent desire, much less a strategy, to go after federal grants. It seemed so dichotomous that a state founded on the search for gold and silver was so apathetic when it came to tracking money in Washington.

In 2011, bipartisan legislators and Sandoval established the Nevada Grants Office, the first formal acknowledgement that there was money to capture. And three years later, the Lincy Institute published a report that concluded: “Bringing Nevada’s lost federal money home is the biggest game in town, and one that Nevada can no longer afford to lose.”

The seven-member Nevada Advisory Council on Federal Assistance will be made up of heads of the state budget and grants management offices, a state senator, an Assembly member, and representatives from a local government, a grant-making nonprofit group and a nonprofit service organization.

We don’t know how long it will be before we start seeing the fruits of these efforts, but at least Nevada is pointed in the right direction: east. Once the state is better staffed with expert grant writers who know the lingo and aren’t intimidated by lengthy applications, Nevada can go on search-and-rescue missions, bringing back our dollars.