Issues out the window as race gets testy

By Steve Kanigher

Friday, March 30, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

The Ward 1 race pitting Las Vegas Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian against challengers Laurie Bisch and Shawn Spanier is devolving into a mudslinging affair that would make a World Wrestling Entertainment promoter envious.

In the final days before Tuesday's primary, the candidates aren't talking much about their plans for downtown redevelopment or safer neighborhoods.

Instead, Tarkanian is having to defend herself against allegations that she has voted on behalf of special interests that have contributed to her campaigns, Bisch is fighting off accusations that she wrongfully inherited an elderly man's estate and Spanier is on the defensive over documents stating that he once owed back taxes and child support.

All three candidates answered - and denied - the allegations against them Thursday on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" on Las Vegas ONE, Cox cable channel 19.

According to a legal brief filed by his attorney in 2001, Spanier failed to file income taxes for several years. Other documents allege that he had violated numerous court orders in California to pay child support, and by December 2005 owed more than $18,500 for the public assistance granted his youngest son and his ex-wife.

Spanier, a businessman who holds a state mortgage lending license - but who on a 2001 child support document listed his occupation as a professional blackjack player and referee with no regular source of income - said he settled the tax and child support issues. The difficulties with both, he added, were not his fault.

"I have the tax returns right here," Spanier told Ralston. "They were filed when they were supposed to be, absolutely without a doubt. They said I owed them a lot of money. I didn't owe them anything."

He also denied being a deadbeat dad, saying, "I would never slight my child support obligations."

When he divorced, Spanier said, he initially sent money to his ex-wife, but later began paying her rent, utilities and other bills directly to make sure the money was spent "in the proper fashion."

"Unbeknownst to me, she was in the California welfare system," Spanier said.

When he was notified by California authorities that he owed money for child welfare payments, he showed the receipts for the money he spent on his ex-wife and child. But after the state rejected those receipts because the money had not gone directly to his ex-wife, he met his obligations, he said.

"I didn't run from it and I paid it," he said. "It's finished."

Bisch, a Metro Police officer, was quizzed by Ralston about allegations that she persuaded retired railroad engineer Arthur Laurie to change his will so that she, not his children, would be the beneficiary of his $1 million estate.

After Laurie died almost three years ago at age 91, Bisch was sued by Laurie's daughter over claims that Bisch had improperly influenced Laurie to alter his will. The case was settled out of court, but Bisch retained almost all of the estate, including the house she inherited on Pinto Lane.

The inheritance is the subject of a negative mailer by a Las Vegas group called Nevada Policy Group, which charges that Bisch "used her position as a Metro Police officer to intimidate the man's children to keep them from visiting their own father." The group is headed by Yale Cunningham, former executive director of the Nevada Republican Party.

Tarkanian said she had nothing to do with the mailer and was not familiar with the group.

"That type of flier is no help to my campaign," Tarkanian said. "I had nothing to do with it. I don't know who the heck sent it out. I wish they hadn't."

Bisch said she met Laurie in 2000 but provided only a vague explanation as to how they met.

"I had just met him one day," she said. "We joked around because his last name is my first name. He would sit underneath his carport and feed the rabbits that are in the neighborhood so I would stop by and visit with him. We became friends."

Bisch said she looked after Laurie's health, including accompanying him on visits to doctors.

"He was a recluse," Bisch said. "He was stuck in his house. He couldn't drive. He didn't have a driver's license, and nobody was there to take care of him."

All the while, Bisch said, Laurie did not get along with his children.

"There was a bad relationship between him and his kids for a long, long time," she said.

But Bisch said she was "completely surprised as everyone else was" to have been named in the will.

"If anything, I tried to put that family back together," she said.

Bisch also acknowledged that she was the target of a Metro Internal Affairs investigation in 2002, a probe she blamed on a complaint filed by a fellow police officer who didn't get along with her.

That complaint involved Bisch, while on duty, moving a truck that belonged to an outdoor cleaning company she owned on the side.

Although Bisch said she had received permission from a Metro sergeant to move the truck, which had been parked near a railroad line, she was ordered by Internal Affairs not to use police time in the future to conduct personal business.

Tarkanian, meanwhile, continued to deny allegations that she was a "special interest" councilwoman who votes on behalf of her campaign contributors.

Most of her contributions, Tarkanian said, have come from donors whose business activities are conducted outside the city limits. Tarkanian said she sometimes has returned donations when confronted with controversial issues.

"I also know that everybody that contributed to me, I told them, 'You know that I vote my conscience,' " she said.