It's time to take a close look at travel budget

We're happy the state's purchasing officials are taking a close look at whether there's a way to cut into the multi-million-dollar travel bill state employees incur flying between Northern Nevada and Las Vegas.

But we hope part of the effort involves cutting travel altogether. We live in an age where sophisticated video conferencing systems can patch together feeds from multiple locations in real time.

There will certainly remain situations where state employees must be in the same room to hold meetings or conduct training or inspections, but surely it's a small fraction of the almost incomprehensible 31,000-plus trips state employees made to Vegas last year.

The costs for those flights was greater than $3.5 million, and the bill went up from there when you add in travel time from Carson City to Reno to catch flights. The time saved would be another huge savings in terms of productivity gained.

It may be true that whatever savings they realize will not make a significant dent in the state's budget deficit, but we're at the stage where all the big ticket savings are already in the bank.

The possibility of further cuts loom large and cutting travel just makes sense.

• This editorial represents the view of the Nevada Appeal Editorial Board.