RTC to hear protest over French buses

Thursday, April 10, 2003 | 9:50 a.m.

French buses continue to be the target of anti-France sentiment in Las Vegas.

Last month the Regional Transportation Commission's Older Americans with Disabilities Advisory Committee asked the agency to dump its contract for $10 million in high-tech buses from a French company.

The first of the 10 buses is scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas in July.

The commission received a special waiver to use federal tax dollars to buy the buses, which feature a mix of traditional bus and commuter-rail technologies.

Joseph Bifano, a business consultant and past candidate for state Assembly, said the advisory committee members would take their case to the RTC board today.

"I don't hate the French people per se," Bifano, a committee member, said. "We have a lot of French-descent, United States citizens here. It's not about French people in general.

"It's about a French government that decided to look down their noses at the American people and said, basically, 'You're on your own.' "

He said the French government is making money off arms sales to Iraq's allies and tolerating the burning of the American flag and the vandalizing of the graves of U.S. servicemen in France.

The Civis company manufacturing the buses may harbor no ill will toward the United States, but it pays taxes to a government that does, Bifano said. That's why his committee is asking the RTC to back out of the agreement.

"This is morally right under the present circumstances," he said.