Columnist Jeff German: Threat to LV again overlooked

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004 | 10:57 a.m.

This has not been a good year to showcase my ability to predict the future.

I thought John Kerry would win the race for president.

I thought Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish would be convicted again of killing Ted Binion.

I thought the Senate would remove Controller Kathy Augustine from office.

And, with all of the fuss authorities made about stepping up security in Las Vegas last New Year's Eve, I was sure we were a lock to get more federal homeland security money.

Wrong.

Las Vegas actually got $2 million less this year in special urban anti-terrorism funds from the U.S. Homeland Security Department. We dropped from $10.5 million to $8.5 million.

We are getting less money than such cities as Denver, $8.7 million; New Orleans, $9.3 million; Phoenix, $9.9 million and Portland, $10.3 million.

Our share of the $854 million pot declined even though our New Year's Eve bash on the Strip is second only in international notoriety to New York's Times Square celebration, and even though Las Vegas has been picked up in terrorism intelligence chatter in the past. Last year Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge mentioned Las Vegas in the same breath as New York, Los Angeles and Washington as cities that needed to tighten security for the New Year's holiday.

And so once again local lawmen are left shaking their heads, wondering what a city that attracts 35 million tourists a year and is home to nearly two dozen of the world's largest hotels has to do to get its fair share of funds.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," says Sheriff Bill Young, who has made homeland security his top priority. "It's frustrating. We go backwards instead of forward."

This wouldn't be so hard to take if Las Vegas wasn't the symbol of Western decadence to the terrorists.

We're on al-Qaida's radar, yet year after year we get the short end of the stick, and we tell Washington, "Thank you. Please give us the short end again next year."

There's plenty of blame to spread around this time. I would start with Nevada's congressional delegation, which once more dropped the ball and demonstrated its lack of clout inside the Beltway. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign and Reps. Shelley Berkley, Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter should have been on this issue like glue after the nightmarish security measures authorities here were forced to take last New Year's Eve.

If the delegation had done its job, it wouldn't be in the position of having to explain its failings this week. And we'd be feeling safer.

We're told that New York City, the site of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack, successfully lobbied for additional cash this time, receiving $207 million over last year's allocation of $47 million. Fair enough. New York probably deserves the additional money.

We're also told that, because Las Vegas doesn't have a port or nuclear power plant to protect, the threat of terrorism is less here than in cities with those facilities.

But we have something no other city in America has -- the ability to attract droves of visitors from all over the world. We own the world's most popular dateline.

Other than New York or Washington, D.C., is there a better place for al-Qaida to make a statement about the evils of Western society than Las Vegas?

One of these days Nevada's congressional delegation will make that clear to the Homeland Security Department -- before the prediction that everyone is afraid to make comes true.