Earlier this week, the Reno Gazette-Journal had a fun little human interest piece about a new piece of public art called the Space Whale being put on display downtown. It’s not a lesser known Batman villain (although it clearly should be), but a former 50-foot Burning Man art installation that the city leased for the next year at a cost to taxpayers of $64,000.

There is a definite time and place for public funds to be used for beautification of public spaces, and to support the arts generally. Indeed, my fellow travelers on the right would do well to remember that politics is downstream from culture, and that artistic expressions of all kinds help define that culture. Personally, I think the whale is beautiful, although 64 grand when we aren’t even buying it outright seems a bit extravagant to me.

Tastes will, of course, vary, and not everything calling itself “art” ought to clutter up the public square or tap municipal coffers. But like any other public expense, a proper cost/benefit analysis must be done, and that analysis must include consideration of other things that money could be used for. Our roads, for example, have taken a special beating this year, as they will tend to do in a winter where ski resorts are open until summer vacation begins. And it’s not like we aren’t already awash in public art. Governments can and should do more than one thing at a time, but sometimes updating the wallpaper needs to wait until you’ve replaced the rotting floor joists.  

When another reader offered his own cost/benefit concerns along those lines, the RGJ did a follow-up piece about it. Through a spokesman, Reno’s city government explained that space whales and giant fallopian tubes (yes, really) come from a special pot of money that is generated by a special tax, and therefore the city “isn’t allowed” by city ordinance to prioritize road maintenance over art installations.  

But are we actually trapped by these budget earmarks?  Or is this just an excuse for elected officials to deflect responsibility and accountability?

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To more thoroughly answer that question, it’s worth another visit to my favorite municipal government entity, the Washoe County School District. I’ve written previously about their inexplicable financial shortfalls and how absurd/misleading/incorrect their various excuses have been for so poorly managing that budget. But rather than following the First Rule of Holes and engaging in a little introspection, they’ve grabbed that shovel and are chippin’ away at the bedrock – enlisting the “we can’t help it, because money is earmarked and therefore out of our control” line of nonsense.  

The district recently whined that the new “Read by Grade 3” law, which requires students to know how to read before passing the third grade, is just killing their budget because it was an “unfunded mandate.” The “mandate” includes “learning strategists” (how those are different/better than more “teachers,” I don’t know, but this is the age we live in), but there was nothing “unfunded” about it – funds were made available through a grant-writing process, and WCSD failed to properly apply for those funds.

(The District, by the way, employs an entire department of no less than ten people whose ONLY %^&* JOBS are to apply for and deal with grants.)

In the face of so many levels of staggering fiscal incompetence, there’s really only one thing left to do. Give the school district the freedom they claim to want.

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Any large school district has a lot to juggle, but they cannot forget their core mission. How we came to the point where a significant fraction (over a third!) of our kids can’t read proficiently after four years of elementary school is incomprehensible to me (even taking into consideration non-native English speakers) and should have resulted in wholesale firings long before now.  

But ironically, having the state step in to manage the local mess just makes the problem worse.  As we’re seeing with WCSD, when accountability can be divided, there isn’t a person with whom the buck stops. Instead of acknowledging that they’re bad at their jobs, or being fired by the school board members who want to win re-election, school district administrators can just blame the distant state bureaucracy.

Worse, some of the state and federal mandates may really not make sense. What does a “learning strategist” do that a good teacher doesn’t? Can any value they add to the classroom be added in other, more cost-effective ways? I’m all for continuing professional training for teachers, and I understand that plenty of kids have special needs, but hiring more employees who aren’t directly instructing students seems… inefficient, at best.  

If the “Read by Grade Three” plan isn’t showing demonstrable results -- and it was only passed in 2015 -- why make local educators wait years (or forever) to change tactics? And maybe it’s a good program, but didn’t cost as much as expected. Why tie up extra money that’s needed elsewhere, while we wait for a Legislature that only meets every two years and has hundreds of other issues to deal with?

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Earmarks and other budget restrictions, when they aren’t simply vehicles for graft, are an expression of cynicism and mistrust in a local government. I confess some sympathy with that impulse. But at the end of the day, the farther away the bureaucracy, and the more layers it has, the less accountable it will be and the less value it will produce. And if a bureaucracy binds itself, as is the case with Reno’s art funds? That’s easy - don’t hide behind rules you have the power to change!

No doubt there are countless other examples of this phenomenon throughout the state. When allocating money to local governments, Gov. Brian Sandoval and our Legislature must make a point to exert less control. That’s the only path to municipal officials that are both accountable and responsive to the citizens they serve.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007.  He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016.  By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City.  His opinions here are his own.  Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].