Columnist Jeff German: Las Vegas could be in lap of luxury

Friday, July 26, 2002 | 3:49 a.m.

CITY OF LAS VEGAS officials have come up with a new twist in the push to tighten local lap-dancing regulations.

They're looking to grab a piece of the action from the G-strings of the dancers and put it into city coffers.

Jim DiFiore, the city's Business Services Division manager, says he's preparing a new ordinance that will require all dancers who work at city strip joints to obtain a business license and undergo an extensive background investigation.

Most dancers are independent contractors, so licensing them makes sense if the city's goal is to hold them more accountable for stretching the limits of morality during their routines.

The process also has potential to make big bucks for the city, as much as $250,000 a year, DiFiore estimates.

It's not as if there is no regulation now. All dancers who work in Las Vegas and Clark County must get a work card, which basically is a photo identification. Metro Police, who charge $35 for the card, do not look into the background of the dancer.

DiFiore's licensing proposal would beef up identification procedures by allowing city investigators to discover whether a dancer has any arrests for drugs, prostitution or fraud.

Women who are employed in the city would no longer have to pay Metro Police $35 for a work card, but instead would be required to give the city up to $100 for a license.

If a dancer also applies her trade in the county, she'll still need a work card because the county has no current plans to license dancers in its crackdown.

DiFiore, it seems, is one step ahead of his county counterparts. His entrepreneurial instincts should make his bosses on the City Council proud.

The licensing czar has figured out that the dancers have the ability to earn more revenues for Las Vegas than anything Mayor Oscar Goodman could bring in pitching premium gin on local billboards.

Suddenly we have a better understanding of the rush to redefine the rules of engagement on the adult cabaret circuit.

It's only a matter of time before county leaders see the same money-making potential.

In the meantime the contrasting approaches of the city and county are befuddling those in the lap-dancing business.

Las Vegas officials, it turns out, also have a different concept of proper etiquette on the dance floor than their county friends.

"I haven't run across one single person who thinks it's a good idea to have totally different rules," says Allen Lichtenstein, who represents several adult nightclubs. "We're running into a real mess here because the city and the county aren't coordinating things."

City and county officials say they have been in touch with each other and want to reach uniform regulations. But they acknowledge they haven't gotten there yet. The County Commission takes up its lap-dancing changes on Wednesday, while the City Council expects to debate its new rules next month.

"We're trying to standardize things as much as we can," says Ardel Jorgenson, the county's business license director. "The way in which we say lap dancing can occur might be a little different. But I'm not sure I see any inequities."

Las Vegas Councilman Michael Mack, who is overseeing the city's lap-dancing initiative, adds: "We're keeping a close eye on the county. It looks like we're heading in the right direction."

True. But the two governments aren't exactly on the same page.

DiFiore says he likes the county's ideas to prohibit the touching of private parts and the stuffing of $1 bills in G-strings.

He wants to take the restrictions a step further by barring dancers from having contact with a patron for more than 45 seconds at a time during a typical 4-minute song.

The proposal DiFiore has put on the table is to allow 45 seconds of contact with a 15-second break for each minute of the song. It's sort of a cooling off period to limit the intimacy between a dancer and a customer.

But even DiFiore acknowledges that the 45-second rule would be difficult to enforce.

It could lead to a run on stopwatches in Las Vegas.

Then there's the confusion the rule would create for dancers who also work in the county, which has no problem with uninterrupted contact, as long as private parts remain off limits.

So what's the rush to action?

The public isn't demanding an immediate end to the social ills of lap dancing.

Coming up with one set of regulations would seem to be in everyone's best interest.

Local leaders must have other enterprising ways of fattening their bottom lines while they put the moves on the lap-dancing industry.