Columnist Jeff German: City Hall reneges on promise to taxpayers

Friday, Jan. 3, 2003 | 4:29 a.m.

THE LESSONS never end in Las Vegas Politics 101, your free course in how elected officials kowtow to the casinos.

If you're a regular reader of this space, you learned in Lesson No. 1 that the casinos always get what they want. Lesson No. 2 taught that elected officials have a right to break a promise to the public if breaking that promise benefits the casinos.

And this is Lesson No. 3: If elected officials get caught breaking that promise, it's all right to rewrite history and make believe the promise never existed.

That's what your city leaders are doing now in the continuing saga over the $7 million public bailout of the Fremont Street Experience, a privately run downtown pedestrian mall lined with casinos.

In 1993, you'll recall, city officials persuaded the Legislature to declare the Fremont Street Experience a public recreational venue so that it could qualify for $8 million in Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority funds normally earmarked for local parks. The money went to build a high-tech light show in a canopy above the four-block mall to help the downtown casinos lure more tourists to their gaming tables, leaving $8 million less for real park projects.

On Wednesday the City Council plans to approve a "cooperative agreement" between Mayor Oscar Goodman and LVCVA President Manny Cortez, giving the city $7 million to upgrade the light show.

The item has been placed on the consent agenda, which means there will be no debate.

The deal, you see, already has been struck. The LVCVA's board voted last month to approve the grant, and the first of seven $1 million payments through 2008 will be made to the city on Jan. 15.

All that's needed now is a little historical revision to wipe the books clean of a 1993 city promise not to ask the LVCVA for more money for Fremont Street.

The commitment was made by then-Mayor Jan Laverty Jones in a May 1993 cooperative agreement with the LVCVA after the tourism agency agreed to hand over the $8 million.

Nowhere in the new agreement is the promise mentioned because that would force city officials to acknowledge that they broke the promise.

The Fremont Street Experience isn't even mentioned in the new contract, which simply says the LVCVA agrees to hand over $7 million "to make capital improvements to recreational facilities within the city."

These are "recreational facilities" that benefit the business interests of the 10 casinos that run the Fremont Street Experience.

Local history buffs will remember that Jones made the 1993 promise to ease taxpayer concerns about the steady flow of public funds into a $70 million project set up to increase revenues for private businesses.

This week city officials are determined to erase those concerns from the history books.

Goodman seems to have no problem revising history. He serves as the LVCVA's secretary-treasurer, which means in effect he's not only signing the new agreement with Cortez, but also with himself.

As a lawyer Goodman probably can see why some might question the legality of the contract.

But trying to get those who drew up the new cooperative agreement to talk about it last week was not an easy task.

City Attorney Brad Jerbic didn't return phone calls and through a City Hall spokeswoman passed off requests for an interview to Luke Puschnig, the LVCVA's legal counsel. Puschnig also didn't return calls. And his bosses, Cortez and LVCVA Executive Vice President Rossi Ralenkotter, were nowhere to be found, still apparently on holiday leave.

The new agreement opens the door for the city to ask the LVCVA for still more public funds when the light show upgrade becomes outdated in 2008.

It may be the start of a never-ending cycle of wasted public dollars -- something that only could happen when city leaders forget that the taxpayers, not the casinos, pay their salaries.