Columnist Jeff German: Finding freedom on Fremont

Tuesday, July 22, 2003 | 11:17 a.m.

If I wanted to be polite, I would tell you that city officials determined to clamp down on freedom of speech at the Fremont Street Experience don't have their priorities straight.

I would say they are wasting valuable resources trying to overturn a recent federal appeals court decision calling the publicly financed pedestrian mall a public forum.

But who wants to be polite in these stormy political times? Let's just call city officials hypocrites.

A decade ago, officials closed off traffic on Fremont Street from Main Street to Las Vegas Boulevard and built a $70 million canopy and light show to attract additional business to the casinos. More than $48.5 million of the project's cost came from taxpayer dollars, including $22.4 million in city redevelopment funds.

Officials got the Legislature to declare the Fremont Street Experience a public park, even though it had no grass and trees, so that the mall could qualify for $8 million in public recreational funds from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The money helped pay for the light show.

Today, though it is the home of concerts and block parties, Fremont Street functions as it did a decade ago. It is, as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion, still a public forum where First Amendment rights are guaranteed.

People still walk along Fremont Street as they did 10 years ago with the same objective -- to spend money in the casinos.

Nothing has changed, except for the fact that city officials obtained $7 million more in public LVCVA funds in December to upgrade the light show.

Though the Fremont Street Experience has been, and always will be, subsidized by the public, city officials want the 9th Circuit to declare the well-traveled mall a private venue.

Officials don't want to encourage adult-oriented businesses to pass out literature on Fremont Street the way they legally do on the Strip. That might make the casinos unhappy.

Sure, the handbillers are annoying. But this is America. The 9th Circuit has ruled that they have a constitutional right to distribute their fliers. You'd think that city officials, especially Mayor Oscar Goodman, a lawyer who has devoted a career to ensuring that constitutional rights are protected, would understand how the Constitution works.

City ordinances prohibit handbilling on Fremont Street, yet allow labor to conduct boisterous demonstrations. No one stopped hundreds of Culinary Union members, carrying bullhorns and picket signs, from marching along the Fremont Street Experience a year ago to protest stalled contract negotiations.

If freedom of speech is good enough for the politically connected Culinary Union, it should be good enough for those who promote sex-oriented businesses, no matter how distasteful their message is.

Gary Peck, who runs the ACLU of Nevada, summed things up best late last week.

"It's long past time for city officials to stop wasting taxpayer money by endlessly trying to defend the indefensible," he said. "They ought to learn to live with the freedoms that are protected by our Constitution."

Translated, that means they should stop being hypocrites and give up a fight they can't -- and shouldn't -- win.