Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001 | 11:06 a.m.
Boulder City Councilman Bryan Nix is a frequent flier on the taxpayer's nickel.
In 2000 he logged $5,951 in travel expenses to attend nine conferences, according to city records. That was more than three times the amount spent by the rest of the council.
All told, the mayor and three other council members spent $1,722 in travel expenses to attend 10 conferences.
Nix, serving a second four-year term on the council, represents the city on several regional boards, including four water-related boards, and has traveled at city expense in that capacity.
Of the nine conferences attended by Nix, four concerned water laws. They accounted for $2,177 in travel expenses, including airfare, hotel and meals.
But despite billing four water law conferences to the city, Nix could point to no new approaches to water issues that he has initiated as a councilman in the past year.
Neither could other councilmen, even though most expressed support for Nix's travel and his ongoing work with regional water boards.
"For every mile Bryan has traveled, I have not had to," Councilman Joe Hardy, a family doctor, said. "I have got to stay home and sleep in my own bed."
Among Nix's expenses, a meal at a one-day Colorado River Law Conference in Tucson, Ariz., in May cost taxpayers $285.85. That large expense was the exception rather than the rule.
Nix remembers covering the $286 dinner at the Flying V restaurant for five or six conference attendees.
"We had key players from the Colorado River Commission and the Southern Nevada Water Authority," Nix said. "It was an opportunity to show some goodwill and to host a dinner. It's a little bit of PR for Boulder City."
Nix said that is true of most of the expenses. Representation for Boulder City at regional conferences is a necessary part of building relationships with other politicians and keeping up on the latest developments in issues important to his constituents at home, he said.
"Some of the people in the public look on travel as necessarily bad," Craig Walton, UNLV program coordinator for ethics and policy studies, said. "They think you're out dancing and drinking and burping, making an ass of yourself at public expense. But it's the price of having not just a functioning city government, but one that is providing leadership."
Ted Jelen, a UNLV political science professor, agreed, adding that any presumption of malfeasance on Nix's part would require "something other than him spending a lot of money."
"What was he traveling for? What accomplishments did he report? Those are legitimate questions," Jelen said. "If he was studying female anatomy in some exotic locale, then maybe you've got something."
But if Nix was attending conferences relevant to city business, Jelen said, there would be little required other than disclosure.
Councilman Bill Smith provided the only comments critical of Nix.
Smith acknowledged that Nix serves as the appointed representative of the city on the Colorado River Commission, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Las Vegas Valley Water District and the Regional Flood Control District. Nix needs to attend conferences in that capacity, Smith said.
But Smith questioned whether the travels logged by Nix had produced any measureable improvement for the city.
"Before that money's spent, the council should be in the loop," Smith said. "For out-of-state travel, council members should outline their plans, how much they'll cost, and their expected benefit to the city."
Most recently, Nix traveled to the Colorado River delta on a trip billed to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. On that three-day trip in January, Nix and other board members drove sport utility vehicles through dry lake beds and paddled into wetlands for meetings in the field with Mexican water officials.
"We are trying to protect, even enhance, our allocation of the Colorado River," Nix said. "We're taking a very strong leadership role. We're trying to be in the driver's seat."
Nix, who earns more than $80,000 annually as a senior state attorney and is the father of three, said that while people think these conferences are all fun, he often spends 12 hours a day in mentally taxing workshops.
At a four-day National League of Cities conference in Boston that cost Boulder City $1,749, Nix recalled, he was snowed in for much of the time. At another four-day national cities conference in Washington, D.C., which cost $1,127, Nix recalls going to meetings despite suffering from an excruciating earache.
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