FBI joins investigation of airport land swaps

Jace Radke and Launce Rake

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 11:14 a.m.

The FBI has joined the list of regulatory and law enforcement agencies investigating controversial airport land deals.

Special Agent David Schrom, an FBI spokesman, said this morning that the "FBI is looking into the matter," but would not comment further.

Sheriff Bill Young said Metro Police officers are conducting their own investigation but would be working with the FBI.

"We're going to work cooperatively on this," Young said. "There's certainly a federal nexus here. We're talking about federal land. I think we'll work well together."

Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said he wasn't surprised to learn of the FBI's involvement, considering the agency's recent political corruption investigation centering on commissioners allegedly trading political influence for money and gifts.

"I talked to Bill Young on Tuesday and he told me that the FBI is working through Metro on this," Riley said. "It's good that there's coordination among the investigating agencies so that we can ensure that there is a thorough investigation."

The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office have already brought political corruption charges against four former county commissioners in connection with a money-for-votes scheme involving a Las Vegas strip club owner.

Former Commissioner Erin Kenny, who has pleaded guilty in the strip club case, also represented much of the area where some of the airport land deals took place.

Sources said the same FBI agents investigating the strip club case are also looking into the airport land deals.

Metro Police, the county and the Interior Department were already investigating a land-use decision by the commission that put commercial zoning on a piece of land a county advertisement had once said could only be used as a cemetery. A county-ordered audit is now under way and expected to take at least another four weeks.

Reilly and county Aviation Department Director Randy Walker said they will cooperate with any FBI inquiries, but have not yet been asked to turn over any information or had any interview requests from the FBI. Walker did say that Metro Police investigators have interviewed staff members about airport land issues.

"We will cooperate with the FBI," Walker said this morning. "All of our documents are open and public."

Walker said it appeared that the FBI's interest was sparked by the involvement in land-use and zoning decisions by several former commissioners already under investigation by the FBI.

That investigation led to Kenny pleading guilty to federal charges including taking bribes from former strip club owner Michael Galardi and using her influence on the commission to benefit Galardi's businesses.

Former commissioners Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Dario Herrera and Lance Malone have also been charged in the case that is scheduled to go to trial this fall.

Malone is also facing charges, along with two San Diego city councilmen, in a parallel political corruption case in San Diego. Galardi has pleaded guilty in both the Las Vegas and San Diego cases.

Kenny represented much of the area in Enterprise and Spring Valley townships that includes the Cooperative Management Area.

The area, a swath of land given to the airport by the federal government, was designed to limit development incompatible with noise from and potential expansion of McCarran International Airport.

But as the airport has sold or traded land in the area away, various deals have been called into question.

It was Kenny, according to commissioners and Aviation Department officials, who insisted that a 38-acre parcel at Durango Drive and Windmill Lane be zoned master-planned residential, a use that would be out-of-bounds for any county-controlled land within the management area.

Without a commercial designation, and without the ability to build homes by any future owner, the county said one of the few, if only, uses would be as a cemetery.

Land broker Scott Gragson, the grandson of former Las Vegas Mayor Oran Gragson, bought the land and re-sold it for a $5 million profit. The new owner then tried to change the zoning and failed.

In the commission's effort to repair a broken process, the master planning for the area went through a yearlong reconsideration, which produced a commercial designation for the area. This opened the door for a matching zone change, which will allow the owner to develop the property.

Walker said the problem came from failure to apply a deed restriction to the land restricting its use.

But when prompted, he said that the issue would have been avoided altogether if Kenny and the commission had accepted the recommendation of the airport staff .

Kenny also bucked the airport and Comprehensive Planning staff in the closing days of her tenure as a commissioner in 2002, backing an effort by Las Vegas home builder Woodside Homes to put more than 300 houses near the departure runway for the airport.

The approval came despite opposition from Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who represented the district, and the airport and planning staff at the county.