Vin Suprynowicz

The firm currently has only seven employees. Nonetheless, the recent decision of Walls 360 — a graphic arts firm that licenses images from children’s books and video games to make life-size wall art — to relocate from San Francisco to downtown Las Vegas is welcome news to a city that’s struggled with the financial effects of the Great Recession for three years, now.

The firm’s principals list Southern Nevada’s cheap real estate, low-cost shipping, large available work force and the absence of a state income tax as major factors in their decision.

But it was the 24-hour nature of the town — and the excitement generated by First Friday and the burgeoning downtown arts district — that co-founder John Duffing cites as the deal-clincher.

“We went to First Friday and checked things out. We’re an artist-centered company, and there’s this incredible community of artists in this city that we didn’t know about,” says Duffing, who moved his operation here six weeks ago.

Walls 360 is one of about 10 businesses that relocated to or expanded in Las Vegas over the summer. That handful of firms spurred $84.1 million in capital investment in the area — a big jump from $3 million in the summer quarter of 2009 — according to the Nevada Development Authority.

New businesses created nearly 300 direct and indirect jobs over the quarter, double the 150 new jobs created in the same summer months of 2009, the state outfit estimates. (“Indirect” jobs are about as easy to count as all those people whose death certificates supposed read “second-hand smoke.”) The one-year payroll impact of those jobs also nearly doubled, to $13.3 million, from $7.2 million in 2009, say the state’s public relations flacks.

With an estimated 130,000 Las Vegans currently out of work, 300 jobs aren’t much of a drop in the bucket, of course. But the new arrivals are especially welcome because they help re-identify the business-attracting local features that are worth promoting — and protecting.

Meantime, as they struggle to attract new employers, municipalities should remember the old business adage that it’s often more efficient to make the smaller effort necessary to retain an existing customer — who’s already shown some staying power — than to attract a new one.

Nevada long had a reputation as a low-tax, low-regulation environment where a hard-working entrepreneur had a better-than-usual chance to make his or her dreams come true.

Local municipalities may not be able to wave a magic wand and solve economic troubles based on decades of systemic malinvestment which in turn was promoted by wrong-headed federal “bailouts,” false price signals, and underlying bad monetary policy. But they could sure do less — yes, less — to drive local businesses, now hanging on by their fingernails, over the edge.

Some regulations make sense. Making sure local eateries sweep up and comply with the basic health code? Fine.

But what about the owner of the local sandwich shop I frequent who — even as he was getting his “A” rating for cleanliness — was cited for having the thermometers improperly located in his cooler … a huge, cabinet-sized cooler provided by his national franchiser, with thermometers built in at the factory? Who a week later was informed by “Zoning Code Compliance” that he’d had his plastic banners up for 60 days and would now have to take them down, even though he estimates they bring in 10 percent of his business off the nearby highway? Will those “compliance officers” be reprimanded if and when he gives up, closes down, and stops paying the taxes that fund their salaries?

Who are his plastic banners hurting? Are they likely to cause the next Triangle Shirtwaist fire? Why were they OK on the 59th day but not the 61st? Or does the county or city just figure he “hasn’t paid enough”?

He’s losing money. If you were him, would you throw away tens of thousands of dollars on a bigger, new, permanent neon sign — for a business you might close down, come January?

What about the local garage operator who reports being cited for a violation after a recent state sales tax audit — because he failed to collect and remit sales tax on a three-dollar turn signal bulb that he installed for a regular customer free of charge?

Is that how government thanks an entrepreneur who’s worked overtime for years to keep a business going — even as he now competes with more and more “gray market” mechanics who can work for less because they duck all the increasing regulatory overhead involved in a “brick-and-mortar” location?

Why should it require a special permit to serve food at a sidewalk table? And another for wine? And a “sheriff’s card” for the wine server — who has to get fingerprinted and then pay to attend a special government-mandated course on how to not serve children? And a fourth permit to employ a guitar-player to entertain any diners who still show up?

Why do all these permits keep expiring, requiring struggling businessmen to go back to city hall and stand in line again … and again?

What about the struggling electrician who, facing $5,000 in lump-sum payments to maintain his bonding and other license requirements, quietly closed his “above-ground” business this summer and now makes service calls in his private car, allowing him to charge half his previous price? Will other taxpaying, “above-ground” entities now have to follow suit, laying off their remaining employees and becoming one-man “gray” enterprises, as the only way to compete with the growing number of unlicensed operators who can thus afford to work for less?

All the above examples are real people, even if I decline to use their names, in most cases for obvious reasons.

New business arrivals should be celebrated, of course. The more the merrier. But the bureaucratic blood-sucking and “death by a thousand cuts” that was tolerated as an affordable annoyance during the go-go years can now make the difference between a struggling business owner holding on for a few more months in hopes of improvement … or cashing in his chips.

So far, the best Clark County and City of Las Vegas authorities have done is to promise “one-stop shopping” for all those licenses and permits — eventually.

That’s not good enough. If you think local economies “always recover — it’s cyclical,” maybe it’s time you took a driving tour of some of our “famous Nevada ghost towns.” The tourists don’t come here for the seafood, the surf, or the skiing, brother.

No, if you want to see an economic recovery, it’s past time to re-examine whether and why each niggling regulation and regulator is really necessary … and get out the scythe.