Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Closure of casino meeting prompts ire of activists

Community activists took exception Monday to a claim by a county commissioner that she did not know a meeting of a group considering rules for new neighborhood casinos was closed to the public.

Chuck Arkell, a founder of Summerlin Residents for Responsible Growth, produced e-mails from Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald's dated Feb. 7 that said the meetings of 11 people to consider the rules for neighborhood casinos would be held behind closed doors.

"I checked with staff and was told that at this time the meetings are not open to the public, as they are internal working meetings," a Boggs McDonald staff member told Arkell in the Feb. 7 e-mail. "Staff wanted to include only those who are on the committee to ensure the group establishes rapport and then maintains focus on the objective."

Arkell said he received verbal confirmation that the meeting was closed from staff members in Commissioner Chip Maxfield's office as well. Arkell had tried to have representatives from the Summerlin group included in the group's meetings.

"The whole thing was a big secret and it didn't need to be," Arkell said Friday.

Boggs McDonald "should have known" the meeting was closed to the public, he said.

"I wasn't the only one ringing the phone down there."

Comprehensive Planning staff canceled the meeting Friday, the same day it was scheduled, with some of the group members at the County Government Center. Chuck Pulsipher, planning manager, said the meeting was canceled after advice from county counsel that the meeting, per state law, had to be open to the public.

Boggs McDonald was not available for comment Monday, but said last week that the County Commission always thought that the meeting would be open to the public, following a model set by meetings of the Clark County Growth Management Task Force. Her comments came Friday, four days after the e-mail from her staff to Arkell.

Boggs McDonald said Friday that while county commissioners did not know the meeting would be closed to the public there would be multiple opportunities for public comment.

Pulsipher on Monday said Boggs McDonald may have been correct because it was the commissioner's staff members, not the commissioner herself, who talked to him about the meeting's status.

"This is probably a breakdown in communication between us and the board," Pulsipher said.

He said Comprehensive Planning has held meetings on other planning issues behind closed doors before.

"We proceeded down that path without thinking about it too much," he said. "We have never been challenged on how we were doing this... Staff was probably talking to us and we were telling them the meeting was closed."

Maxfield said he didn't know if the meeting was closed or open to the public.

"I don't know if we ever discussed it one way or the other," he said.

The discrepancy prompted a sharp retort from activist Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, who has battled Station Casinos on plans to build casino resorts on West Charleston Boulevard and Interstate 215 and Durango Drive and I-215.

"Commissioner Boggs McDonald's recollection of what the county commissioners knew is obviously inaccurate based on the e-mail received from her office," Mayo-DeRiso said.

Staff members from Commissioner Bruce Woodbury's office told her that the meeting was closed, Mayo-DeRiso said, which prompted her to ask for a legal opinion on whether the meeting was subject to Nevada's open meeting law.

"I looked at the law myself, read it, and it was pretty clear to me that the group was a subcommittee formed by the political body, and therefore open to the public."

Mayo-DeRiso has said Station Casinos, which has 13 casinos in the Las Vegas market and five more sites approved for development as new neighborhood casinos, has too much influence on the committee. Members of the committee were selected by staff and commission members, and the group includes at least three with present or former associations with Station.

Company representatives, however, say they only have one representative on the group: company counsel Matt Heinhold.

Mayo-DeRiso also said Boggs McDonald's charge that Mayo-DeRiso was a "paid operative" of the Culinary Union, which has supported efforts to curb Station Casinos' expansion plans, was unfair. Mayo-DeRiso said that while the union has supported those efforts financially, she has not been paid or benefited financially from the union's support.

Boggs McDonald, a former member of Station Casinos' board of directors, joined the county commission in requesting a group be formed to look at the issues of design standards for so-called neighborhood casinos last month.

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