Goodman criticizes use of anti-Yucca money

Diana Sahagun

Friday, June 21, 2002 | 9:20 a.m.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman criticized the anti-Yucca Mountain advertising campaign on Thursday, saying that if the city's $150,000 contribution went toward television commercials, it could have been better spent.

The mayor said the ad campaign failed to capture the attention of hundreds of mayors across the United States. Goodman said that during his trip to Madison, Wis., last week for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, he found that none of the mayors had seen the commercials, which ran in Vermont, Utah, Wyoming and Iowa.

The city contributed $150,000 toward the governor's fight against Yucca Mountain, and the funds were earmarked for the advertising campaign. Goodman said that if all the money went toward the advertising campaign -- rather than the state's legal fight -- it could have been spent in a more useful way.

"If the end product is that the mayors are supposed to see it and be impressed by it, it's been an absolute failure," Goodman said.

The state has raised $1.9 million in public and private donations that officials thought would be matched through a $3 million fund set up by the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee. Nevada officials learned this week, however, that the committee can release only $434,000 to fund the campaign against the proposed nuclear-waste repository.

The issue is expected to be voted on by the U.S. Senate within the next few weeks. The Senate's vote is the last step in the federal government's approving the Yucca Mountain site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Goodman said the campaign won't be won over the airwaves, but through a "person-to-person campaign" with officials about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste across the country.

Goodman said the state's fund would have been better spent it it were given to him to defray costs of his upcoming trip to Washington to lobby officials.

Goodman plans to travel to Washington next week, at the invitation of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The mayor has identified specific congressmen he wants to meet with, including Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who the mayor once worked for, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

When asked what he could do in Washington that Nevada's two senators couldn't, Goodman said: "I don't know, I'm a character. They know I'm the mayor of Las Vegas ... They know I was a mob lawyer in my heyday. They like to hear what I have to say."