Columnist Jon Ralston: Spring Valley flap brings sham of a law to light

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2000 | 9:54 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

The scene could unfold today, tomorrow and beyond:

Gov. Kenny Guinn and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman are giving executives of a Fortune 500 company a tour of the Las Vegas Valley. The company could bring hundreds of jobs to Southern Nevada, contribute millions of dollars to local and state governments and help diversify the economy.

The outfit's president, though, has a question: "Some of our employees like gaming. Some don't. But they all want to know where in this area they can live and be sure it's far away from a casino."

Guinn and Goodman look at each other, then stammer in unison: "Um, nowhere."

That, in essence, is what is at stake as lawyers argued Friday before an obscure panel over the fate of a proposed neighborhood casino in Spring Valley.

As one of the gaming industry's most revered figures, Bill Boyd, looked on, lawyers for his official partners in the development, Triple Five, and his unofficial partner, the Clark County Commission, made their case for why the Gaming Policy Committee review panel should not overturn one of the most combustible decisions by a local government in some time.

As Friday's lengthy hearing illustrated, this has come down to defining the undefinable. That includes the phrase "quality of life," which defines this debate, or the salutary or pernicious impacts of gaming, which defines this community and state.

This is the logical end to a loony process that began more than a decade ago with a facade in Carson City as legislators crowed about restricting casinos to the resort corridor and gaming operators moved to ensure that would not happen by carving exceptions.

The replay of that charade in 1997 with a new law has now been followed by a minority of the county board that voted for the project last month, meeting a supermajority requirement in the law because of legal quirks.

And now the Gaming Policy Committee panel, an inchoate subset of an executive branch relic, has been handed this precedential and far-reaching decision.

We would not be here today, waiting for a March 17 vote by the review panel and the inevitable court appeals, if state lawmakers in 1989 and 1997 had not kowtowed to gaming and development lobbyists looking for their projects to be grandfathered and for the neighborhood casino door to be left ajar.

Now, Triple Five, with a helping hand from the County Commission, has slipped through that crack and opened the door to an uncertain future. That uncertainty and the problem with these definitions was perfectly illuminated by a few utterances Friday.

"Are we here today to say all neighborhood casinos are bad?" asked county attorney Rob Warhola rhetorically. "I don't think that's why we're here today."

Oh? Maybe not. But that's what the Legislature's intent was during those two sessions. But the laws they wrote didn't comport with the speeches they made. How convenient for Triple Five/Boyd and the hypocritical neighborhood casino operators opposed to this project.

On the other hand, Ron Madson, an attorney for the angry citizens in the area, told the panel, "I'm not hear to badmouth casino gambling today."

Oh? Maybe not. But he was there to denigrate the effects of casinos on nearby residential areas. And those effects may be real. But what are they?

Are they, as panel member and Gaming Control Board Chairman Steve DuCharme said, "the mischief makers, the criminals that may be attracted"? Really? Then isn't there a dissonance at home with the "gaming is wonderful and has no adverse impacts" message the industry is offering in Washington?

Las Vegans will not long remember what the policy panel does in a few weeks, especially with the appeals. But whatever happens, the impact cannot be interred here.

The ultimate outcome will send one of two messages: Either that gaming is always fine, and casinos can be built literally anywhere in Southern Nevada, or, instead, that casinos should not be allowed to sprout anywhere in the valley, and that it's time to end the madness.