Yucca fight one of year’s major local stories

Jean Reid Norman

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 11:04 a.m.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the aftermath were undoubtedly the biggest news of the year, but they weren't the only stories of 2001.

The Las Vegas Sun responded to the early-morning plane crashes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon with a special edition that went out to newsstands only hours after the attacks.

That day's newspaper included bylined stories covering all of the local aftershocks: the closure of McCarran International Airport, Hoover Dam and many government buildings, the immediate shift to high alert at Nellis Air Force Base, and the shock Las Vegans felt along with the nation.

In the following days and weeks, the Sun continued to examine the local effects: from canceled conventions to casino layoffs and National Guard callups, from the terrorists' paths through Las Vegas to the backlash on the Muslim community.

But the Sun this year brought its readers many other important stories such as a law firm's conflict of interest on the Yucca Mountain Project, an investigation of the Summit View youth prison and a proposal to cut the state high school championship game to save money.

As a reminder of what normal life was like in Las Vegas before terror shook the nation, we review some of the Sun's other top stories of 2001.

Yucca Mountain

Two stories this year have shifted the fight over the Yucca Mountain Project, giving Nevada more ammunition in its battle to keep a nuclear waste dump from being built 90 miles outside Las Vegas.

In February an anonymous letter, apparently written by an insider, was sent to Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and other members of Congress. The six-page letter warned that the project was on the brink of failure. It alleged gross mismanagement at the site where the DOE wants to bury the nation's spent nuclear power plant fuel. The letter came on the heels of a December 2000 Sun story that cited evidence of an Energy Department bias in favor of building the repository, when federal guidelines mandate the DOE remain unbiased. The evidence: a memo attached to a draft overview on Yucca Mountain research that said the document could be used to persuade members of Congress to approve a repository. The research has not been finished.

The memo prompted an internal investigation, and the letter brought a General Accounting Office audit. The first report could not substantiate the bias in the memo. The GAO report, however, said the DOE should postpone recommending Yucca Mountain as a repository site because too much scientific information is missing.

That conclusion was considered a victory for Yucca Mountain opponents in Nevada. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, since that finding became public, has said he has no time line for making a recommendation on a repository.

In July Sun reporters found that the law firm that was helping the Energy Department prepare for licensing of a repository had also been lobbying for Yucca Mountain.

An internal investigation confirmed in November that Winston & Strawn had a conflict of interest and, before the month was out, the company had withdrawn from the $16.5 million contract.

Nevada's congressional delegation may pursue criminal charges against the firm, and state officials plan to file a complaint with the Illinois State Bar Association hoping to get the firm disbarred or otherwise punished.

More important to the fight over Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department now faces a possible delay while it finds a new law firm to shepherd its licensing application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Summit View

Before the terrorist attacks the Sun had begun to investigate reports of mismanagement at Summit View Youth Correctional Center, the state's year-old high-security juvenile prison.

The investigation, published in September, found evidence of sexual and physical abuse by staff members against inmates, suicide attempts, escapes and escape attempts, drug and alcohol use and poor maintenance of the facility.

Before the Sun could complete the investigation, the private operator of the prison, Youth Services International, pulled out of its $4.3 million annual contract with the state two years early.

The company never responded to the Sun's request for comment on alleged improprieties cited in the internal documents the newspaper obtained. It said it was pulling out of the contract because the prison never reached its full capacity of 96 young inmates.

The state has not determined where the juvenile offenders who remain will go when the prison closes next month. Many of them will be paroled, state officials say, and those who are not eligible will be screened for Rite of Passage, a program for youth offenders, or may be sent to out-of-state facilities.

The Legislative Interim Finance Committee turned down a plan for the state to take over Summit View.

Nevada Power Co.

Nevada Power Co. of Las Vegas was embroiled in the turmoil in electricity markets in 2001.

Soaring wholesale electricity prices, California's energy shortage and high capital costs to keep up with population growth contributed to a big rate hike and huge losses for the utility and its parent, Sierra Pacific Resources of Reno, early in the year.

Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific received a record rate hike of $300 million or 17.7 percent in 2001.

Sierra Pacific had reported a loss of $83.5 million for the quarter ending March 31, and blamed the West's power crisis and the lack of a mechanism that would allow it to hike rates fast enough to keep up with soaring wholesale power costs.

Under Sierra Pacific's warnings of bankruptcy, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill that allowed the company to keep track of losses from power sales to customers, then recover these losses at a later date through rate hikes. By posting these accumulated losses as assets, Sierra Pacific was able to return to profitability.

The year also was marked by the cancellation of Sierra's planned purchase of Portland General Electric for $3.1 billion, the temporary suspension of Sierra's stock dividend, the end of electricity deregulation in Nevada and the cancellation of power plant sales, rolling blackouts in Las Vegas and a controversial proposal at the end of the year for yet another massive rate hike -- this one for $921 million.

Aladdin bankruptcy

The year 2001 saw the biggest casino industry bankruptcy in memory when the $1.2 billion Aladdin megaresort filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in October.

The resort, controlled by developer Jack Sommer and British gambling giant London Clubs International, had suffered since its 2000 opening because of its lack of a deep customer base like those of competitors including MGM MIRAGE and Park Place Entertainment Corp., a huge debt load that forced the resort to make crushing interest payments and what critics called design errors.

Strip pedestrians had to climb stairs to reach the casino -- a no-no in Las Vegas. Another blunder, critics said, was to design the massive attached Desert Passage Mall and the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts so that patrons could reach them without walking through the casino floor.

The long walk patrons had to make through Desert Passage to reach the casino from the parking garage proved to be another problem.

The slowing U.S. economy in early 2001 hurt the Aladdin, and the September terrorism sealed its place as the most spectacular Las Vegas resort failure since the bankruptcies of the Stratosphere and the Resort at Summerlin (later called the Regent and now the J.W. Marriott Las Vegas).

The Aladdin, rocked by infighting among the owners and the firing of its chief executive in 2001, remains open but will likely be sold by its creditors.

Vigoa secret hearings

When Jose Vigoa was arrested last year in connection with a daring robbery of the Bellagio and named by police as a suspect in other casino heists and a fatal armed car robbery in Henderson, public interest was high.

Also high, apparently, were security concerns over a prisoner considered dangerous by authorities.

The Sun discovered in February that a secret hearing for Vigoa had been held in January in the Clark County Detention Center.

Judges occasionally close hearings, but District Judge Kathy Hardcastle had arranged the hearing with no public notice. Not even the court administrator was told.

Vigoa appeared on the fifth floor of the jail in the presence of heavily armed Metro SWAT officers.

The Sun obtained transcripts, in which Vigoa's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Drew Christensen, objected to the hearing, arguing that Vigoa deserved a public one.

Subsequent court appearances for Vigoa were public, with Vigoa appearing via video hookup to the jail.

Vigoa since has appeared in open court for a three-day preliminary hearing.

A judge earlier this month found enough evidence to try him in the other casino robberies and in the slayings of the two guards during the Ross Dress for Less robbery. He already faced charges in the Bellagio heist.

Michael Mack's debt

After a questionable vote in June to deny an auto dealership in Las Vegas, Councilman Michael Mack became the target of ethics complaints that dominated news coverage of him.

What wasn't evident, until the Sun did some digging, was that Mack, a pawn shop owner, was $3 million in debt.

The extent of the debt became clear during court proceedings on the ethics complaints. Once the debt became public, two creditors took Mack to court and received judgments for almost $700,000 in payments.

Days after the second judgment, in December, Mack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move that could follow him into the next election.

CCSN spending

When the Sun first heard rumblings of free spending among student officers and senators at the Community College of Southern Nevada, it seemed something was wrong.

There was substance to the rumors. Financial records showed thousands of dollars spent on parties and travel for a small percentage of the school's 35,000 students. Of $500,000 given to student government during 2000-2001, $94,000 went for parties and food. A single Christmas party cost $17,700.

That funding could have gone to clubs and student-related groups, school officials said.

The Board of Regents took notice of the spending, and in November put stricter controls in place over student government finances.

The most drastic of those reduced CCSN student fees from $2 per credit hour to 50 cents per credit hour, which is what students at other community colleges in Nevada pay.

Illegal vending

A vending machine provided refreshment to visitors and employees of the public defender's office for 12 years before anybody noticed something was askance.

The name posted for service on the machine was not a real company. That was because the machine was owned by Public Defender Morgan Harris, in violation of a 1959 law that requires that vending machines in public buildings benefit the state's blind residents.

The Sun's questions brought the machine to the attention of state officials, who ruled it violated the law, and before the Sun could publish a story, the machine was moved into a break room.

The Sun's investigation also found Harris used the proceeds to fund office parties and had his employees service the machine on company time.

A county audit confirmed that county-paid lawyers had run private errands for Harris on the clock, and that Harris had requested reimbursements for volunteer work.

Harris had already planned to retire, but in October, the day before the audit was to be released, he quietly stepped down two weeks early.

The search for his replacement brought out long-simmering criticisms of the public defender's office: that it plea-bargained cases too readily and did not fight hard enough for poor defendants. The office took fewer than 1 percent of its cases to trial.

The Clark County Commission addressed those complaints in October. County Manager Thom Reilly followed up a week later with tough accountability standards for county department heads that would make it harder for managers to take advantage of their positions.

State college money

The Nevada State College at Henderson went from pipe dream to budget item in less than two years, but the road to funding was winding and ultimately ended just short of the destination.

The Sun reported in December 2000 that Gov. Kenny Guinn did not plan to fund the start-up college, then followed up in January with Guinn's change of heart, that he had included "some money" to build the college in his budget.

The budget allowed only $1 million for the college's first year, compared with the $3 million founding President Richard Moore said was needed.

In addition, debate over the wisdom of starting Nevada's first state college continued throughout the 2001 Legislature, as the funding worked its way through various committees.

Start-up money survived budget cuts in May, when it was clear that the state's revenue projections had been too high.

But in the final bleary-eyed hour of the Legislature, authorization for $1 million in first-year start-up funds went by the wayside. On the morning after, legislators and college officials weren't sure whether the college had what it needed to keep its offices open through the summer.

The Sun found that the college did not have funding for the first year. Before the summer was over, most of the college's small staff was let go, and Moore was charged with raising the money -- including his own salary -- in private donations.

An 11th-hour donation allowed Moore to continue his work and hire some help, and the college now is recruiting its first freshman class for the fall.

Rising GPAs

In October regents of Nevada's higher education system started kicking around an idea to raise minimum grade point averages required to enter the state's two universities -- University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and University of Nevada, Reno.

The Sun reported the proposal to raise the minimum from 2.5 to 3.0 more than a week before the regents were to discuss it. Raising the standards meant professors could spend less time teaching basics, and it would help the universities' national reputations.

Before the regents could meet, members of the minority community had organized opposition to the plan, arguing that it would keep more Hispanics and blacks out of the universities.

After two months of delays, the regents settled on a last-minute compromise. The minimum grade point average would be raised more slowly -- to 2.75 by 2006, and 3.0 by 2010.

In addition, weighted GPAs would be considered, meaning that students who took honors classes would not be penalized for lower grades in those tougher classes. And the number of waivers offered for those who did not meet the standard was raised.

State champs?

When budget woes pressed the Clark County School District in May, athletic director Larry McKay offered to save money by putting Southern Nevada teams in a class by themselves.

The 5A division would have eliminated the need for a north-south state championship game, saving money on transporting teams between Las Vegas and Reno and putting them up in hotels, the Sun discovered.

It was offered as an alternative to a "pay to play" plan that would have required athletes to pay fees. But it was greeted with a swift boo from the state's coaches.

When the School Board had finished its cutting, the state championship was spared and the 5A division scrapped.

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