Clark County commissioners in Las Vegas defeated a sales tax proposal called More Cops to add police officers in the county, reports the Las Vegas Review-journal. The measure died 4-3, failing to get the five-vote super-majority of the seven-member body required by the Nevada Legislature for passage. Commissioner Susan Brager, who had delayed a vote on the increase in August because of unanswered questions, helped defeat the measure yesterday after unsuccessfully trying to get a proposal for half the increase through.
Had the full increase passed passed, the proposal would have increased the 8.1 percent sales tax to 8.25 percent in two parts to pay for hiring additional police officers. The vote was a blow to Sheriff Doug Gillespie, who spent the better part of 2013 trying to get a sales tax increase through. The state legislature authorized the county to increase the sales tax rate by up to 0.15 percentage points to pay for officers. That would have paid for 101 additional officers in the metropolitan police and another 60 to 70 total for other county departments. “It causes me concern,” Gillespie said. “Crime is going up, and the main reason is because officers are going from call to call instead of being proactive.” His department has 2,483 officer positions, a figure that would drop to 1,871 positions in 2020 with no changes.