Columnist Jon Ralston: MGM MIRAGE-owned, operated

Saturday, June 12, 2004 | 11:55 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 12 - 13, 2004

LAS VEGAS, June 13, 2014 -- Gubernatorial candidate and MGM MIRAGE Chairman Terry Lanni today called for a 20 percent increase in the Gross Receipts Tax, an idea embraced by several elected officials at a news conference at The Bellagio.

Outgoing Gov. Richard Perkins, recently appointed to the MGM MIRAGE board of directors, applauded as Lanni announced the proposal. Perkins, term-limited after eight years, helped create the GRT during his first legislative session in 2007. Perkins also supported the MGM MIRAGE-led effort two sessions later to exempt the gaming industry from the tax.

Also on hand was Las Vegas Mayor Jim Murren, who also happens to be Lanni's right hand at MGM MIRAGE. Murren, who helped engineer the buyout by MGM MIRAGE of Mandalay Resort Group 10 years earlier, later turned his skills to consolidating two other entities -- the city of Las Vegas and Clark County.

With the backing of Gov. Perkins and Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, an MGM MIRAGE board member who has served more than four decades in Carson City, Murren accomplished the city-county merger that even the wildly popular three-term Mayor Oscar Goodman never could.

"It's time that the business community in this state understands who is in charge and that it must shoulder more than its share of the tax burden," Lanni declared.

Lanni's announcement comes as no surprise as his tenure at MGM MIRAGE during the last decade has been marked by one controversial idea after another -- nearly all of them successful. Perhaps his boldest move came shortly after the Mandalay merger when he used the resources of the combined companies to purchase the Las Vegas Review-Journal from Stephens Inc., and immediately decided to entomb the afternoon paper, the Las Vegas Sun. His early endorsement from the R-J nearly a year before the election ("Lanni is only choice that makes sense") was hardly surprising.

Lanni also was the driving force behind the idea, finally consummated in 2011, to have the MGM MIRAGE Party fully certified as a major political party in Nevada. Secretary of State Lynette Boggs McDonald approved the party's status after what was widely seen as a lax ruling by her on its qualifications to be on equal footing with the Democrats and Republicans -- Boggs McDonald, coincidentally, had received $470,000 in bundled contributions from MGM MIRAGE companies during the 2010 balloting.

Lanni also is responsible for the company essentially owning the west side of the Las Vegas Strip, from Mandalay Bay down to Circus Circus, a string of uninterrupted properties. The most controversial move, of course, was the city/county of Las Vegas using eminent domain to condemn Caesars Palace on behalf of MGM MIRAGE -- but Mayor Murren immediately saw the merits.

Lanni also has been a pioneer in automation and cost-cutting in the industry. Shortly after the purchase of Mandalay Resort Group in 2004, Lanni played hardball with the union that existed at the time -- it was called the Culinary -- and managed to have it decertified at all the MGM MIRAGE properties after labor leaders refused to accept a dramatically scaled-back health plan and an indefinite moratorium on salary increases.

That maneuver made it much easier for Lanni to lay off hundreds of workers at his new megacompany and to institute new robotic technology for some games that analysts say could result in an almost fully automated industry by the year 2020. Lanni, though, said he never plans on replacing check-in folks and a few other positions because he believes the warm, welcoming MGM MIRAGE touch is the company's signature. (Reports of MGM MIRAGE's blacklisting of employees laid off by the company, making it virtually impossible to find a job at other properties, most of them owned by MGM MIRAGE, drew a National Labor Relations Board probe. But the company's $14 million in bundled contributions to President Clinton helped head off that investigation.)

Lanni also is credited with bringing vertical integration to gaming, which also has inured to shareholder benefit:

MGM MIRAGE Wine and Sprits, which provides liquor to most of the other properties and in 2007 put well-known spirit man Larry Ruvo all but out of business. Lanni's famous quote -- "Larry Ruvo will always be welcome as a bartender at Emeril's" -- was seen as further evidence of his ruthlessness.

MGM MIRAGE Linen, which provides sheets and towels to most of the Strip properties. Some of the other companies were upset to discover that the sheets and towels were embossed with the MGM logo.

Perhaps Lanni's most creative move came when he agreed to allow the Mission Band of Indians to purchase the MGM Grand to prevent federal anti-trust regulators from cracking down. The brilliance of the scheme was cemented when it was learned that MGM MIRAGE signed a lucrative contract to continue managing the resort.

Lanni's campaign has been bolstered in recent days by endorsements from the Nevada Resort Association, headquartered in The Bellagio and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, headquartered in The Mirage. The Democrats and the Republicans have declined to put up a candidate against him, making this the purest anointment in state annals.

And who am I to argue, considering Lanni, like his company, is the only game in town. Now I must go into his office and see how he likes this column ...

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