Sunday, April 12, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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There is nothing more pressing than how our community deals with, lives through and grows from the unprecedented challenge we find ourselves facing. A galvanized group of Southern Nevada leaders recognizes that and is building a strategy to get us through the crisis and come out stronger on the other side. Today and next Sunday, I am devoting this space to guest columnists from the group to outline their efforts to our readers.
We are optimistic about their strategy, and we’re pleased to present it to our community. Although the title of this column is Where I Stand, think of these guest columns as a look at where we stand together, as a community, in fighting the pandemic and building for our future.
— Brian Greenspun
Today, we face two unprecedented challenges due to COVID-19: the immediate health crisis and the resulting economic emergency. Southern Nevadans have faced many challenges, and defeating COVID-19 and implementing an economic recovery plan will test our mettle once again — like never before.
Our first priority is to preserve life by stopping the spread of this deadly pandemic. Gov. Steve Sisolak continues to take bold steps to curb the spread of COVID-19, and we should all support his leadership. While battling this immediate health emergency, we must also be actively engaged in preparing to fight the looming economic crisis. Our governor took the bold step to close the Las Vegas Strip and our regional economy in order to save lives; Clark County will be responsible for reopening the Strip, recovering essential industries and jobs, and restarting our lives.
In late January, Clark County became the tip of our spear in this fight and launched the Multiagency Coordination Center (MCC) to lead regional efforts. This structure has and will continue to function as a center of collaboration where regional public and private sector leaders can meet to address the immediate health crisis. The structure also provides the foundation to create and advance plans for our economic recovery. The threat posed to our region, our state, our nation, and the world by the spread of this deadly virus requires every resource — public and private — available to us.
Working together through the MCC, our region responded rapidly to this unfolding crisis and enforced the governor’s directives to keep Nevadans safe. Local jurisdictions declared emergencies, suspended contracts, held special meetings, drafted regulations, and adopted new policies to preserve life and promote public safety while ensuring the continuation of critical functions and essential services in our communities.
We understand that the more strictly we follow the guidance of health care experts, the more lives will be spared and the quicker we can recover from this pandemic and get our economy off its knees. We are thankful for the governor’s focus on protecting the lives of every Nevadan, and we will continue working diligently to enforce his directives, while at the same time making preparations to reopen the Strip and our regional economy.
As we marshal our resources to eliminate COVID-19 from our state — and we will do just that — Nevada political, business, and community leaders must prepare for a second challenge: mitigating the damage to our economy caused by the closing of businesses large and small across our region and reopening our economy. To address these issues, we immediately began organizing collaborative meetings with regional CFOs, public sector CEOs, members of local government affairs teams, and other inter-departmental partnerships across jurisdictional boundaries. The critical question being asked is, “What is something we should be doing today that in one year when we look back, we would wish we had done?”
Moody’s Analytics recently predicted that Nevada will likely be the nation’s hardest hit state economically by the coronavirus pandemic. The company looked at six metrics the virus would impact, and Nevada ranked most vulnerable in several categories, including trade and travel disruptions and tourism.
Unemployment claims in Nevada continue to rise, with 244,000 residents out of work as of last week. That’s almost 17% of our state workforce, and the number is certain to rise.
An analysis by economist Jeremy Aguero suggests our tourism industry could lose $39 billion over the next 12 to 18 months, affecting more than 320,000 employees. Local governments are projecting a 20% to 40% reduction in revenues needed to support critical municipal services and to support public safety, among other things. Our congressional delegation is working around the clock to provide federal assistance to replace these lost revenues and to protect the services provided by local governments. As Aguero concluded, the impact will be unparalleled and economically staggering.
To address these unprecedented challenges, we began working with UNLV professor Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West, and North Las Vegas City Manager Ryann Juden to assemble and engage stakeholders and to develop a blueprint to support those executing regional operation plans to defeat the COVID-19 threat, enhance our health care services to meet the needs of all of our residents, and launch a robust economic recovery and diversification plan to open Nevada businesses, create new jobs, and prepare our families and communities for a better future. We look forward to working with Brookings Mountain West and SRI International as they work with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to create a statewide economic recovery plan.
While the magnitude of this economic crisis will be unlike anything we have seen, rebuilding our economy is something we have done before! Together after the Great Recession, we successfully worked to fix the hardest-hit city in the hardest-hit state. We did it — and we survived with the scars to prove it! With this experience and the tools we developed, we are committed and confident that Southern Nevadans will join once more to heal our region and finally diversify and structure our economy so we are not as susceptible to dramatic swings of boom and bust. Southern Nevada is home to one of the most dynamic industries in the world, but an overreliance on hospitality and tourism makes our region uniquely susceptible to economic contractions. Our economic reliance on hospitality and tourism is undeniable. We are a face-to-face economy that relies on people being shoulder-to-shoulder. A sustainable recovery is uncertain, particularly if we rely only on hospitality and tourism in the new world of social distancing.
We suggest three goals around which to develop a regional recovery plan:
• Stop the spread of COVID-19 and connect the private and public sectors with federal stimulus dollars to support and protect residents and help them get back to work.
• Prevent the return of COVID-19 and lay the foundation to increase positive health outcomes for residents, secure federal funds to stabilize our regional economy, and begin influencing the state’s economic recovery plans by building a robust export based manufacturing sector and attracting hospitality and tourism supply chains to locate in our valley.
• Prepare for the next pandemic and transition Southern Nevada’s economy so that it is diversified and balanced by making place- and people-based economic investments focusing on sectors identified in the state’s economic recovery plan.
Achieving these goals will be challenging, but we see tremendous opportunities.
Indeed, one world existed pre-COVID-19, and a markedly different world will emerge post-COVID-19. The governments, businesses and economies that recognize and adapt to this new and changing reality will flourish. The stakeholders who collaborate and work together will succeed, and our region will emerge a national leader in this transformation.
Our region should understand how an unprecedented economic crisis in our country can result in large, transformational infrastructure projects. Hoover Dam stands as a monument of the opportunities before us! Now is the time for our region to think big, not to get lost in the details of this crisis or be overwhelmed by the magnitude of our shared challenges. As children of the Greatest Generation, we have an opportunity to make our parents proud!
Marilyn Kirkpatrick is chairwoman of the Clark County Commission, and John Lee is mayor of North Las Vegas.
