Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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Now that the calendar has switched over to 2020, one of the reasons for optimism about the coming year is the new plan for construction of an instructional building for the UNLV School of Medicine.
This proposal is a grand slam for Southern Nevada and the entire state. Modeled after plans that have yielded success in metros across the nation, it involves creation of a private nonprofit development corporation that will construct the building and lease it to the university for $1 a year. The vast majority of funding will come from donors, who have already committed $155 million toward the project. The state will contribute $25 million in public funding that was committed to the medical school in 2015.
The building will be transformational for Southern Nevada and, in turn, the state. Once finished, it will allow the med school to double its class size to 120 per year, which will help the region meet a demand for high-quality physicians. And by improving the health care system in the area, the enlarged school will strengthen Clark County’s ability to draw new businesses and residents, which will boost state tax revenues and thereby benefit Nevadans from border to border.
No wonder leadership is galvanized in support of the plan, including Gov. Steve Sisolak, state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, Clark County Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, UNLV Interim President Marta Meana and the medical school’s former and current deans, Barbara Atkinson and John Fildes, respectively.
That’s what the Nevada Board of Regents should focus on when the time comes for it to give the project whatever approvals are needed at its level.
The building offers the regents an opportunity to show they are committed to serving UNLV’s best interests — something they’ve long been accused of not doing. More specifically, they’ve been criticized for working to benefit UNR to the disadvantage of UNLV and the state’s other institutions of higher education.
That criticism is well justified. This is a board that has tilted the funding formula to provide more state funding to UNR than to UNLV, created a revolving door of leadership at UNLV by hectoring and micromanaging the university’s presidents, and breaking the relationship with the donor community perhaps beyond repair by pushing out popular former UNLV President Len Jessup.
But with the medical school project, the regents have a chance to take a healing step and do the right thing for the university, the region and the state.
Unfortunately, there’s an effort afoot to throw sand in the gears by impugning the donors and questioning their motives. A columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, as is that newspaper’s wont, speculated that UNLV supporters might try to make the deal conditional on them being allowed to dictate who serves as UNLV president — to hijack control over UNLV away from the regents, in other words.
How unfair, although not surprising. The reality of the situation is that the donors, in coming up with the approach involving ownership of the building by a development corporation, found a constructive and elegant way to deal with their frustration at the regents and the long-term harm the regents have inflicted on Southern Nevada. And their motive is clearly to help the medical school reach its potential, not to overthrow the regents.
Nevada voters will have the opportunity to fix the regents problem in November when they can vote to remove the special constitutional protection from that board, which has allowed them to act without regard for UNLV’s best interests.
And as far as the deal at hand goes, even the columnist acknowledged that there’s been nothing to suggest it is out of line.
No question, the donors clearly don’t want the regents, with their continued and harmful meddling, involved in the building. But the beauty in the way the deal is set up is that it can work without the supporters and the regents having to play in the same sandbox.
So instead of the two sides butting heads, the university and the community get a resource of incredible value and taxpayers get a big break. Considering the alternative is the state funding the project through $125 million in bonds, the deal is a vastly better option and, we’re guessing, far less expensive.
Again, that’s what the regents should focus on as the approval process begins — not smears and hypotheticals.
If they do that and approach the matter in good faith, there’s no reason to believe that any complications can’t be resolved, if they even come up.
