Raggio: Cutting staff would devastate rural tourism efforts

Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, questioned Wednesday whether the Tourism Commission could continue doing its job if cut back as deeply as proposed by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

The Gibbons budget plan would merge tourism and economic development into a single entity. Overall funding would be reduced 60 percent with a third of the commission staff, including the director's position, eliminated. Gibbons made that decision after the commission rejected his choice for the director's spot.

During the budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday, Raggio asked whether tourism still would be able to function.

Acting director Steve Woodbury said the agency still would function. "It's just how much impact you want to have."

Woodbury pointed out that when Colorado eliminated its tourism division, tourism dropped 30 percent in two years.

"It seems to me it's not really a great saving if the merger results only in the elimination of the director of the tourism office," Raggio said.

He said his review of the budget indicates that rural tourism marketing efforts would suffer the most.

"It's almost a devastation of any effort to market the rurals," he said. "I'm wondering if we are not emasculating what the purpose of the commission on tourism is."

Woodbury confirmed Raggio's charge that since President Obama's comments about not holding fancy meetings and retreats in Las Vegas, conventions have been canceling trips to Southern Nevada. He said the commission is fighting to stop those cancellations.

Raggio also questioned the damage that cutting nearly half the staff of Nevada Magazine would have on the quality of that product, which he described as one of the nation's best.

He was told far fewer copies will be handed out to potential visitors and that the magazine will be printed on cheaper paper.

No action was taken on the proposed budgets.