Columnist Jeff German: Tax worries? Relax and enjoy game

Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2003 | 10:56 a.m.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to think about the melancholy task of raising taxes this week?

If only Gov. Kenny Guinn could have delivered his State of the State address next Monday.

It would have allowed us to focus on a more appealing subject -- Super Bowl Week and Sunday's battle between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders.

Despite the gloom and doom of the governor's speech Monday night, there is much to cheer about this week.

Las Vegas is gearing up for a banner weekend. Sports bettors from around the country will be converging on the city to lay down tens of millions of dollars on the outcome of the National Football League's championship game. Room rates are at their highest, and the town will be packed with people willing to spend money.

It's the last hurrah to another season of football, and it's going to be celebrated as if it's the end of a good thing. Next week the reality of facing no more NFL games on Sunday for seven months will be far more painful to many Las Vegans than having to pay a new gross receipts tax or more money for beer and cigarettes.

So can't we just enjoy this last week without worrying about what the future brings?

Can't we enjoy figuring out whether the Raiders will beat the point spread? Or whether Miller Lite should have produced that infamous catfight commercial?

Or whether tourism officials will sue the NFL for not allowing Las Vegas to run a $2.1 million Super Bowl ad the city never wanted to run in the first place?

You want odds this week? How about setting the line at 40-1 for the chances of a suit being filed against the NFL? Why, after all, would the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority want to spend $2.1 million on one day's worth of advertising when it probably already has obtained more than that amount in free publicity by manufacturing the controversy with the NFL?

Surely, the LVCVA would rather put that $2.1 million toward something more important -- like upgrading the bathrooms in the casinos at the Fremont Street Experience.

Or buying stock in the Travel Channel, which devoted all of last week to Las Vegas. The cable network ran features on the cops of Las Vegas, the gamblers of Las Vegas, the wedding chapels of Las Vegas, even the adult shows of Las Vegas.

Nobody had to pay the Travel Channel for that. And nobody has to pay all of the reality television shows, the network news teams and the Hollywood film crews to come to town.

It turns out that we don't need one-shot Super Bowl commercials and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns to promote this city.

All we need is our name -- Las Vegas.

Deep down, tourism officials know that, but they'll never admit it because then they'd be out of a job and couldn't spend the public's money.

And maybe we'd be paying less taxes.