As gestures of support go, it is small but sincere.

With hundreds of Southern Nevada federal employees working without pay and struggling to survive during the disastrous partial government shutdown, Clark County officials have started collecting donations on their behalf. While even their best efforts won’t alleviate all the pain being experienced, the helping hand shows compassion and might get some through a senseless financial hardship not of their making.

The county treasurer’s office is encouraging those affected by the shutdown to apply for penalty waivers if they’re late making property tax payments. And, last week, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada announced it would offer free bus rides for furloughed federal workers.

After barely punching in as governor, Steve Sisolak has called on the Nevada System of Higher Education to work with college students directly hit by the shutdown. He also sent meals to Transportation Security Administration workers who are on the job without pay while the shutdown grinds into its second month.

They’re all small, but sincere gestures in a crisis that threatens the nation’s safety and security over wasteful border wall funding that accomplishes neither goal. The Trump shutdown is twisted and cruel even by the plummeting standards of the president’s scandalous administration. A president who has never flown commercial is willing to disrupt the country’s air service and endanger the national security to get his way.

On the TSA line, officers earn approximately $16 an hour -- when they’re receiving paychecks. As one regular traveler through McCarran Airport observes, “There’s not many people pining away for that position.” The pressure and pay don’t leave much economic wiggle room in the best of times, and to ask them and thousands of other federal employees to come to work without pay is shameful.

Of course, most Americans know this.

While most of the nation supports the idea of border security, according to a recent CBS News poll 71 percent of Americans don’t think a border wall is worth the partial government shutdown.

The issue is of special importance in Southern Nevada.

You don’t need a master’s degree in marketing to determine that failing to pay front-line security personnel at the busy airport that services a community that relies on tourist economy for its survival is just bad for business. In a dangerous world, it also invites disaster.

“TSA workers are paramount to moving 43 million visitors a year through that airport,” former County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani says. “... It’s hard work and not much more than minimum-wage service industry job. In reality, they see our customers first when they come through the airport.”

Adds Commissioner Tick Segerblom, “The best vacation can be ruined by a terrible experience at the airport. Whatever it takes, Las Vegas needs to ensure that TSA employees show up for work and can focus on their jobs and not how they can survive."

To do less is the height of irresponsibility.

Five former Department of Homeland Security secretaries know this. They wrote a letter in an effort to urge the president to end the shutdown. Even Trump’s recently departed Chief of Staff John Kelly has pleaded for common sense.

But common sense is in short supply. Air traffic controllers, pilots, and flight attendants also know this.

In a joint statement Wednesday, airline industry labor leaders said the safety environment was “deteriorating by the day” and warned, “We have growing concerns about the effects this shutdown is having on our aviation system. There is going to come a point when we are no longer able to maintain the levels of safety and security the aviation industry and the traveling public have come to know and rely upon. The longer the shutdown goes on, the greater that threat becomes. Lawmakers have a responsibility to preserve the safety and integrity of our nation’s aviation system by re-opening the federal government.”

They added, “In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the system will break.”

Think about it: Integral airport safety personnel are working without pay.

Thanks to the Trump shutdown, a system Las Vegans and the rest of the nation so heavily rely on is breaking down in real time.

Contact John L. Smith at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.