The irony is, those drivers’ own tax dollars are being used in this attempt to lobby for a multi-million-dollar “light rail” boondoggle, which wouldn't do a thing to reduce congestion on most of the Valley’s most traveled corridors -- even if such a scheme were ever to meet its trumped-up ridership projections, which would be a first in modern American history.

(Washington’s Metro may be an exception -- but only because things got so bad they finally just made it free for federal employees, largely tossing away the fig leaf of “fares.”)

One searches in vain for any “Spend millions on a trolley line to nowhere? It’s your call” or “Light rail -- underutilized and over budget, everywhere it’s tried” billboards, erected in even the most casual effort at even-handedness.

The Regional Transportation Commission has an annual advertising budget of $1.25 million. The purpose of that budget is to publish and distribute bus schedules, and otherwise make the public aware of changes to the subsidized transportation services being offered.

But there’s no new service to promote or publicize, here -- the lap dance hasn’t even begun.The new proposal into whose ear the RTC staff cannot wait to stick its tongue involves using an abandoned railroad right-of-way, because it’s available (kind of like looking for your keys under the streetlight because the light’s better), to run new trolleys from Henderson in the southeast to a point near McCarran Airport (wouldn’t want to actually connect to McCarran; the taxi companies might complain) and then north through downtown Las Vegas to a point near Nellis Air Force Base and the planned new UNLV “North Campus” (Motto: If you can dribble, you deserve a college degree.)

Commission spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman contends the ad campaign is “purely informational,” but is honest enough to admit commission staffers “favor the development of the guideway project.”

It shows. Look at their slogan. America invented “transportation for all” -- it’s called the affordable private automobile. We already have fully subsidized bus service in the Las Vegas valley, to boot. Will either of those things somehow go away if the Hooterville Trolley is never built?

Why not advise: “Blow millions in urban mass transit grants and pretend they’re free? It’s your call.”

“They’re not educational. ... They’re not presenting facts,” objects Beverly Dix, a member of the commission’s guideway steering committee who opposes light rail. “They’re just presenting a Pollyanna, rose-colored glasses view of this thing.”

“Information from the RTC is misleading,” agreed valley resident Bette Brickman at a Thursday steering committee meeting. “Taxpayers must have the facts about the high costs and the negligible benefits of light rail.”

The RTC is free to hold public meetings to publicize details of this plan, of course, leading up to the expected pro forma Nov. 10 ratification vote by its board of directors. But assuming such a scheme cannot be easily funded with spare change found under the bus seats, the public will someday be called upon to vote on this proposal, making it very much a “political cause.”

And that makes spending the voters’ own tax money to lobby in favor of this wasteful scheme just plain wrong, whether or not the district attorney’s office finds grounds for prosecution here, under the state law which properly bars government agencies from using public funds to promote political causes.