Chairwoman says she’s silent partner in venture

Saturday, Oct. 4, 1997 | 1:59 a.m.

She wrote a letter to the Ethics Commission saying despite her business ties, she has "an arms-length relationship with the hotel" and believes she can continue voting on matters pertaining to it.

MGM Grand Chairman Terry Lanni has said Atkinson Gates and her partner Ed Nigro personally approached him early this year about a lease for their frozen-daiquiri store called Fat Tuesday's. That lease agreement is near completion, awaiting only a letter from the ethics board about when the commissioner can vote on agenda items affecting the resort.

Executives from Circus Enterprises Inc., Primadonna Resorts Inc., Caesars Palace and Las Vegas Sands Inc. said this week that Atkinson Gates also has approached them about similar leases on their properties.

The question remains how silent her silent partnership actually is.

"She certainly wasn't silent with me," Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, one of the casino executives Atkinson Gates approached for a lease, said Friday. "There was nothing silent about her solicitations."

Craig Walton, an ethicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said "if she's really a silent partner, she wouldn't be talking to anybody."

Deputy Attorney General Louis Ling - the ethics panel's legal counsel - said Atkinson Gates testified during a confidential ethics hearing Sept. 26 that she is not involved in operations of the daiquiri venture and is contributing only financially. She said she has invested $12,000 so far, and plans to obtain a Small Business Administration loan for a $50,000 investment.

Ling said Atkinson Gates gave the impression that Nigro alone is conducting dealings for the business.

Adelson said the commissioner unmistakably was working on behalf of the venture when she approached him "several times" since March 1996 about a lease in his Sands Venetian mall. He said he rejected her requests partly because he thought her role as a regulator of his and other Strip resorts presented a conflict of interest.

"I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. I didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole," Adelson said, noting Atkinson Gates has cast votes relating to his resort since approaching him for a lease.

Atkinson Gates repeatedly has refused comment about her business venture and her county voting record.

In May, she sought an opinion from the ethics board on whether she could vote on matters pertaining to the MGM Grand, which falls under her jurisdiction in the county. Ethics commissioners held a hearing on that matter Sept. 26 and, as Ling tells it, advised her "she should always disclose her business interest and will never go wrong by abstaining."

After news reports this week about her daiquiri business, Atkinson Gates followed up Thursday with a letter requesting an ethics opinion "on the overall appropriateness of such a venture by a sitting county commissioner." She wrote that conversations other than those she had with MGM Grand officials were "made in passing and cannot be considered solicitations."

Adelson responded Friday by saying, "Yvonne is a very clever lady and has done a very good job rationalizing what she did."