WEEK IN REVIEW: CLARK COUNTY

By Tony Cook (contact)

Monday, Nov. 5, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Like an army with several lines of defense, smut peddlers on the Strip have several lines of offense, or offensiveness.

First are the front-line foot soldiers, scores of them handing out cards featuring (technically not) nude women.

Then there are the "news racks," which don't contain any newspapers, but do contain advertisements for strippers, escort services and topless clubs. These are the artillery.

Clark County has had limited success fighting off the foot soldiers, in part because of the First Amendment. In fact, the county began permitting news racks with the hope they would reduce the need for human peddlers.

Instead, we got both.

The county plans to introduce an ordinance Tuesday that will increase permit fees for news racks on the Strip from $25 to $100 annually.

The law also would increase the fee that news rack operators must pay - from $75 to $100 - to retrieve their stands if the county impounds them for violating county code.

Les Henley, deputy director of the county's Public Works Department, said the point of the proposal is not to drive off news racks, but to recoup the cost of overseeing them.

The current fee structure pays only about 20 percent of the county's costs, which include two full-time employees, vehicles, fuel and some of the work performed by supervisors and secretaries.

The proposed fee increases would cover 90 percent of the county's costs, Henley said.

Whether this will make a visible difference on the Strip is questionable.

Smut peddlers have an uncanny ability to adapt and innovate.

Henley said the county met with news rack operators about the proposal. Some said the fee hike could put them out of business. Other operators licked their lips at that idea, seeing an opportunity to expand into their competitors' territory.

The Clark County Deputy Sheriff's Association. That's the union for the 14 members of a little-known group of deputies who act as messengers for the civil courts, delivering documents such as stalking, harassment and temporary protective orders.

For those efforts, a proposal county commissioners will consider Tuesday would give them a 4 percent pay raise this year, followed by 3 percent raises in each of the following two years. That would be in addition to annual merit raises of up to 5 percent for which the deputies are eligible.

All said, the proposed raises would cost the county $244,603 over three years.

One of our favorite readers, Commissioner Tom Collins, left us a message calling the item "slanted." We called him to ask what he meant, but he just said he's not going to talk to us anymore and then hung up.

We also got a call from Assemblyman Mark Manendo, D-Las Vegas, who led opposition to former Sheriff Bill Young's push for a modular jail at a sewer district site on the east side of town.

Manendo said he and others gathered 1,700 signatures from people who lived within a few miles of the proposed site. Among those opposing the site was Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, who was running for the seat then. The candidate she beat, Myrna Williams, initially favored the project but changed her position during the election, Young said. What Young called sheer politics, Manendo called democracy in action.

Meanwhile, we talked to Assistant County Manager Liz Quillin about her recent visit to Arizona's Tent City. She had some interesting things to say.

Surprisingly, Quillin said, many ask judges to put them in Tent City. The reason? They get good -time credit if they do their time in the tents.

"They get a third the time," she said. So don't have too much sympathy for them.

Also, most people assume Tent City is in the middle of the desert. Actually, Quillin said, the tents are right next to Maricopa County's massive 8,000-person -capacity jail. That means Tent City inmates can use amenities such as the kitchen, shower rooms and medical facilities inside the jail building.

Clark County doesn't have space around its downtown detention center to pitch tents. If it built a modular facility at the sanitation district, it would be more expensive than Maricopa County's model because supplemental facilities would have to be built there as well, Quillin said.