Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

POLITICS:

NLV councilman says son earned campaign pay

0212Robinson

Tiffany Brown

North Las Vegas City Councilman William Robinson, a candidate for mayor, says his son — who was paid $17,300 for campaign work last year — has been instrumental. “I’ll defend this to Jesus Christ himself,” he says.

North Las Vegas City Councilman William Robinson has paid his son — a UNLV student and onetime baggage handler — nearly $90,000 out of his campaign coffers over the past six years, according to campaign expense reports.

Robinson, a seven-term councilman, is running for North Las Vegas mayor.

The expense reports, filed annually and throughout campaign years, show William Robinson II, 30, has been routinely paid for work as a member of his father’s staff since 2003.

The payments include at least $500 on the first and 15th of each month during 2008, totaling $17,300 for the year.

Additionally, the son was paid $18,500 in 2007; $33,084 in 2006 and $18,600 in 2003. He was not paid by Robinson’s campaign in 2004 or 2005, according to records.

Robinson last ran for council in 2007, defeating his opponent by more than 50 percentage points. Council members are paid $41,819 annually in North Las Vegas. The mayor earns $47,880 per year.

The 69-year-old Robinson has been on the council since 1983, making him the longest-serving elected official in Southern Nevada.

Robinson vehemently defends paying his son.

“He’s the treasurer, the co-chairman,” Robinson said. “He does everything. He helps the volunteers, makes calls. He attends functions that I can’t make it to. He puts up signs.

“I’ll defend this to Jesus Christ himself.”

He said his son does more work than he is paid for. However, he said he does not keep track of hours staff members work, nor does he set pay rates.

“They are paid how much I can afford to pay them,” Robinson said. “Sometimes I cannot afford to pay them at all.”

Robinson also employs Paladin Advertising, a local firm headed by Democratic consultant Jim Ferrence. The consulting group was paid more than $14,000 in December. Ferrence is the manager of Robinson’s mayoral campaign and has worked with the candidate since the mid 1990s.

Robinson said his son has been instrumental in helping Ferrence run his campaigns.

The younger Robinson has not worked on any other campaigns, although he volunteered on Barack Obama’s Nevada campaign for president.

Said Ferrence of the younger Robinson’s work: “He is underpaid. I wouldn’t work for that. I would demand more.”

The father declined to provide his son’s unlisted phone number to the Sun. The Sun knocked on the door and left notes at the younger Robinson’s suburban North Las Vegas home. One of his father’s campaign signs was posted in the yard.

The son has worked as a baggage handler at Wynn Las Vegas, and UNLV officials confirmed he is enrolled this semester.

The younger Robinson filed for bankruptcy in 2005, claiming $64,528 in assets and $107,104 in liabilities.

In the filing he claimed earnings of $12,600 in 2003. However, his father’s campaign expense records show he was paid $18,600 that year.

Candidates have broad discretion about how they use campaign donations. Paying a family member is neither illegal nor unusual. However, police have investigated payments to family members who appear to have little political experience.

In 2007 the Sun found that former Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates had paid her son, Brian Atkinson-Turner, more than $300,000 for campaign work in 2003 and 2004.

The son had no campaign experience before collecting checks from his mother.

“(Atkinson-Turner) took money for nothing,” said Ferrence, who said he was serving as spokesman for the younger Robinson. “There’s a difference. William Robinson II has been working on campaigns for years.”

Atkinson-Turner and his wife, Kathryn O’Gara, are both charged with filing false income tax returns and false corporate returns for their company, Ad Vibe, in relation to the campaign payments.

The couple pleaded not guilty in federal court last year. If convicted, they could face four years in prison and a $350,000 fine.

The Sun reported this week that a plea agreement is being negotiated.

District Judge Donald Mosley has been dogged by allegations that in 1990 he provided a $10,000 loan to a then-girlfriend out of his campaign fund.

And last year Mosley presided over a case in which former Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs was accused of spending $1,200 of her campaign money on a nanny. She eventually repaid the baby-sitting money to her campaign.

Robinson said this week he did not know whether his son had paid federal income taxes on pay from the campaigns.

“If he hasn’t, I’ll make sure he does,” the councilman said.

The mayoral primary is April 7.

“I don’t pay my family members out of my campaign,” said Councilman Stephanie Smith, who is running for mayor. “That’s not my practice.”

Councilwoman Shari Buck, who also is running for mayor, has paid her husband, Keith Buck, for consulting work. But Keith Buck has also been paid for consulting by Smith, Robinson and other local officials over the past decade. Shari Buck said the Robinson matter is between him and North Las Vegas residents.

Ned Thomas, a former city planning commissioner running for mayor, said authorities should look into the payments.

A newspaper clipping from 1983 shows a smiling young William Robinson sitting on his newly elected father’s lap.

More than 20 years later, the son told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he hoped to someday follow in his father’s footsteps.

He serves on the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, a position his father held in the early 1980s.

Does he still want to run for office?

“I don’t know,” the father said. “I think he is seeing a lot of the B.S. that goes on. So I don’t know.

“Every election something comes out ... I don’t sling any mud in any election. I don’t care if I’m trailing or leading, that’s not my way.”

Sun librarian Rebecca Clifford-Cruz contributed to this story.

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