$109 Vegas suite for official called routine

Marc Humbert

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 | 9:16 a.m.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York's powerful speaker of the Assembly said Monday he paid $109 a night for a suite that has brought up to $1,500 at a Las Vegas hotel-casino whose parent company wants in on the state's growing gambling industry.

Sheldon Silver told the Associated Press he didn't ask for special treatment during a two-night hotel stay in 2002 and wasn't surprised by the apparent good deal. A spokesman for the hotel's parent company said "neither our company nor Speaker Silver did anything wrong here."

The comment came after the New York Post reported in its Monday editions that the Manhattan Democrat got to stay in the Paris Las Vegas hotel's Lyons suite in January 2002 for what appeared to be a bargain rate.

The suite, not normally available to the general public, has rented five times over the past five years for $1,500 a night for use as a hospitality suite, according to Caesars Entertainment spokesman Robert Stewart. But Stewart said the suite had also gone for as little as $25 a night. More normally, guests are charged up to $400 a night for the suite. The hotel's room rates fluctuate based on demand, Stewart said.

The Post said the information about Silver's stay at the hotel-casino became known during a random audit of Caesars Entertainment's lobbying activity by New York state's Lobbying Commission.

The Paris is part of the Caesars Entertainment conglomerate that is looking to get involved in casino gambling in New York in partnership with one of the state's Indian tribes.

Kris Thompson, a spokesman for the Lobbying Commission, refused Monday to discuss details of that audit.

"This is a random audit that has not yet been completed," he said.

Silver said he has not been contacted by the Lobbying Commission and, as far as he knew, he was not under investigation.

Caesars Entertainment's chief Albany lobbyist, James Featherstonhaugh, told the Post that in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers, business was slow when Silver visited.

Featherstonhaugh said the hotel charged Silver "the government rate."

"They were giving everything away in Las Vegas, post 9-11," Silver told the AP.

Caesars Entertainment, which pays Featherstonhaugh's firm $180,000 a year for lobbying, is looking to open a casino in the Catskills north of New York City.

Silver's stay came less than three months after the Legislature and Republican Gov. George Pataki approved a measure to permit six new Indian-owned casinos, including three in the Catskills. Thus far, only one -- in Niagara Falls -- has been opened.

Two other Indian-owned casinos -- the Oneida-run Turning Stone facility near Rome and a Mohawk-owned casino in northern New York near the U.S.-Canadian border -- were approved earlier and continue to operate.

Silver said that while at the Paris, he and his wife went to dinner with a top Caesars Entertainment official. The meal turned into something of a disaster, Silver said, when it turned out the hotel didn't serve kosher food. Silver is an Orthodox Jew.

"She may have bought me dinner, but I didn't eat it," the Assembly leader said. "I probably had a seltzer, or two."

Stewart said it wasn't unusual for the hotel to provide suites at normal room rates to government officials, casino high-rollers or those the company was seeking to do business with.

"It's certainly been done for many other people in the past and is something we do as standard practice," he said.

Stewart said Silver's suite of about 750 square feet contained a living room and a separate bedroom.

The Assembly speaker said if the hotel was looking to make up for the bargain room rate on the take from his gambling, it was disappointed.

Silver said he spent "maybe $25."

"I am not a gambler," he said.