Editorial: City must curtail cell phone abuses

Sunday, Aug. 6, 2000 | 9:13 a.m.

City of Las Vegas employees are supposed to reimburse the city for personal calls they make on their government-owned cellular phones. But it was only after the Sun four weeks ago requested city employees' cellular billing statements -- for calls made during the first six months of this year -- that many of the employees started paying off their bills for personal calls.

In an editorial last week we criticized Mayor Oscar Goodman's aide, William Cassidy, for refusing to release some of the phone numbers he called -- although these clearly are public records. An even larger issue that the city must address, though, is clamping down on employees who have been allowing taxpayers to subsidize their personal phone calls.

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