Goodman leaving mementos behind

Erin Neff

Friday, June 25, 1999 | 10:14 a.m.

Oscar Goodman will bring more than just his own staff to City Hall on Monday. He'll arrive with the furniture that had been filled with memos, retainer fees and legal briefs over the course of his 35-year law career.

What won't come with Goodman, 59, to his 10th-floor City Hall office after he is sworn in Monday as mayor of Las Vegas are mementos of his years spent representing reputed mobsters.

"The only pictures that will be in there are pictures of my family," Goodman said Thursday during his last press conference as mayor-elect. "And that's family, with a little F."

Stephanie Boixo, a former student body president at UNLV who is now employed with R&R Advertising, will join Goodman's City Hall staff. Boixo, who is a friend of Goodman and his wife, Carolyn, will be one of three paid staffers.

Chris Castro, a staff member with Sen. Richard Bryan's office who also worked on Goodman's mayoral campaign as liaison to the Asian community, and Tom Ayres, who worked in Goodman's office, will round out his paid staff.

Tom Letizia, one of Goodman's three campaign managers, and Terry Murphy, who most recently worked on the illness-shortened Jay Bingham mayoral race, will make up Goodman's transition team. Neither Letizia nor Murphy will be on the city's payroll, Goodman said.

Goodman said he has spent the past week in a dizzying array of meetings with civic leaders, city officials and gaming industry figures, including Mirage Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn.

He also found time to squeeze in dinner with movie star Robert De Niro at Nobu, the new Japanese restaurant in the Hard Rock hotel-casino.

"You know, he appeared in my movie 'Casino,' " Goodman joked. Goodman played a bit role as himself in the film in which De Niro starred.

Goodman dined with De Niro and Drew Nieporent, who co-own New York's Nobu, and the mayor-elect tried to interest the pair in opening a restaurant downtown. During dessert, he said, musician Kenny G serenaded them with three songs on tenor saxophone.

Aside from dining with stars and performing a skit during a fund-raiser for charity benefiting children with AIDS, Goodman has also been studying up on everything from zoning variances to the future expansion of the City Council.

He has also continued his almost daily meetings with City Manager Virginia Valentine and routine sessions with City Clerk Barbara Jo "Roni" Ronemus.

"Today she's going to teach me how to vote, well, not how to vote, but how to push the little (electronic vote display) button," Goodman said. "And how to turn my microphone on and how to turn other people's mikes off."

Goodman said he was not yet ready to announce which boards he plans to serve on as mayor.

"If I want to be, I will be on all of them," he said, smiling. "But the mistake I can make is to overburden myself."

He did vow not to burden taxpayers in any way -- part of the reason he's moving his own furniture from his downtown law offices to City Hall this afternoon.

"It's kind of bittersweet for me," Goodman said of the drawer-cleaning task. "I'm a pack rat."

But the toy rats in mousetraps that dot his office and the walls of courtroom sketches, photos and other trinkets from his lawyer days will stay behind.

"The law office will remain intact," he said. "As the museum that it is."