Editorial: Bill was an invitation to conflict

Monday, April 21, 2003 | 8:55 a.m.

In February Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman joked about the bar he hoped to open in a downtown redevelopment area with actor Joe Pesci as his partner. "The problem is, he'll want to call it Joe's, where I want to call it Oscar's," the mayor said.

Actually, Goodman's problem was with the Legislature, which wanted to call it a conflict of interest.

And last week the Legislature sensibly did just that. It allowed to die a bill submitted by the city of Las Vegas that would have made it legal for city officials to privately invest in the redevelopment areas they publicly oversee. Redevelopment involves investing public money in areas that are considered blighted. The public money, which in the case of downtown Las Vegas so far amounts to more than $100 million, reduces costs for private investors, making it attractive for them to develop an area they otherwise wouldn't consider. Theoretically, redevelopment ultimately benefits the public when the area begins producing more tax revenue than it would have in its blighted state.

Of course, allowing public officials who oversee redevelopment to also be private investors within the areas would generate unacceptable conflicts. The bill that died stipulated that city officials would not be eligible for the same direct financial incentives as other developers and business owners. It's not hard to imagine, however, that incentives would come their way once they left office. The bill did not address the real problem, however. City officials who oversee redevelopment approve not only the funding but which areas receive it. Whenever they pumped public money into an area where they had private investments, those investments would increase in value. Their motivation for advocating redevelopment would be forever suspect.

By allowing this bill to die, the Legislature saved downtown redevelopment from a future fraught with controversy over conflicts.