Thursday, March 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics

Rhodes climbs the hill

A rumor has been circulating for months that Rhodes Development has been angling to buy Blue Diamond Hill. The rumor started almost immediately after John Laing Homes pulled out of a deal to develop the hill adjacent to Red Rock Canyon. But sources said this week that it's more than just a rumor. Rhodes officials declined to discuss the matter Tuesday, noting as vaguely as possible that confidentiality agreements often preclude real estate buyers from blabbing to the media. Bill Marion, spokesman for Jim Rhodes, suggested calling the property owner, James Hardie Inc. Hardie's lawyer, Cece Tripi, echoed the confidentiality refrain, saying it prevents the company from commenting.

Rhodes, builder of Rhodes Ranch in the southwest valley and Elkhorn Springs in the northwest valley, is well known for developing on the outskirts, so he's an obvious choice to pursue Blue Diamond Hill. Residents of the nearby town of Blue Diamond and area environmentalists, who chased John Laing Homes away from the hill, might have a tougher time stopping Rhodes, who has considerable juice.--GS

Liberal feels the heat

The Mercury's Nevada liberals list, published a few weeks ago, generated a fair amount of friendly interest, but it also brought a few kooks out of the woodwork. For example, UNLV criminal justice professor Randy Shelden, who was quoted in the article, received a piece of hate mail that bordered on a death threat. The letter from one Jim Donlan gets right to the point: "Shelden: Commie Jew Traitor." Donlan says he just read the "Pinko Mercury"and the liberals discussed in the cover story "should be shot for treason or be decorating lampposts." Donlan reveals a nasty racist streak before concluding, "If commie traitors such as yourself get too powerful, there is always the armed vigilante. We know who and where you are. Stop communizing Nevada."

Shelden turned the letter over to UNLV's attorney as well as the FBI. The FBI told him it sees this kind of hate mail all the time, but that it would submit the original letter for analysis.--GS

Return of the water grab

The Southern Nevada Water Authority announced last week that its long-envisioned rural water grab is back on the front burner. Water authority officials, giving a report to state lawmakers on the drought, mentioned almost offhandedly that they will be pursuing thousands of acres of groundwater in rural areas in order to meet Las Vegas' unquenchable thirst. Several years ago, the authority put the water grab on hold after rural counties vowed to battle the urban invaders over their resources.

The water authority told lawmakers it will take years to get the rural water to Las Vegas. Pipelines must be built, of course, but there's also the inevitable tide of opposition that will rise up once the authority's plans become known in the hinterlands.--GS

Twisted Guinnster

Is Gov. Kenny Guinn completely dingy or what? While the governor devotes all his resources to getting a series of tax increases through the Nevada Legislature to balance the state budget, he flits off to Washington, D.C., last week to support President Bush's tax cuts. You heard that right. Guinn told the Las Vegas Sun it's okay for Bush to cut taxes because "we have to balance our budget and they [Congress] don't." That's the way to stick to your principles, governor!

Guinn, by the way, was in Washington to attend the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, where governors spent a whole lot of time complaining that the federal government is cutting its contributions to programs such as Medicaid that the states end up having to pay for. No word from Guinn on whether he's concerned that Bush's tax cuts would further burden states such as Nevada.--GS

Slater moves on

Mike Slater has resigned as executive director of the Nevada Interfaith Council for Worker Justice to take a union executive position in Salem, Ore.

Slater ran the Interfaith Council for 4 1/2 years. He was the first and only director of the organization that advocates for worker rights. Last fall, Slater ran unsuccessfully for a state Assembly seat in northwest Las Vegas.

Slater said he began looking for a new job a couple of months ago because he wanted to have more resources at his disposal. The Interfaith Council was basically a two-person operation. "We tried and failed to build an organization that was bigger than one or two staff people," Slater says. "We did a good job of building a board but we were not successful in building up the budget to support a larger organization."

Slater's new post is as political director of the Service Employees International Union Local 503, which serves 35,000 state workers in Oregon. He began work this week.

"I enjoyed my time in Las Vegas," Slater said. "I enjoyed the people I met. I would have preferred to stay, but there wasn't anything available."

The Interfaith Council board is expected to conduct a search for a new executive director.--GS

New senior paper

A monthly newspaper geared toward Las Vegas seniors was launched this week. Senior Life is published by Dan Roberts and edited by Larry Wills. Roberts is associated with Grand Slam Distribution, a local newspaper delivery company. Wills is a Mercury freelance writer and the former managing editor of the Las Vegas Senior Press, a monthly owned by Las Vegas Press.

Senior Life contains a mix of news stories and columns targeted to residents 50 and older. Wills has brought a few longtime Senior Press columnists with him, including historian Michael Green (who also writes for the Mercury) and veterans affairs writer Bill Brzezinski. The paper also features travel and sports sections.

Senior Life's first issue has a distribution of 35,000 copies, 14,000 of which are being delivered to doorsteps in Sun City Summerlin, Sun City Anthem and Sun City Macdonald Ranch. Roberts says the press run for the next issue will be 40,000 to 45,000.--GS

Fighting chance

Nevada's quirks often make news in the pages of the New York Times. But on Sunday, Nevada's quirky history made the Times sports pages.

Columnist William C. Rhoden wanted to know about the last middleweight before Roy Jones Jr. to move up in class and become heavyweight champion. It happened in 1897. Rhoden visited the site, at Pratt and Musser streets in Carson City, where there is a historic marker. He also interviewed Phil Earl, the emeritus curator of the Nevada Historical Society and the longtime author of the popular "This Was Nevada" series, and Guy Louis Rocha, the state archivist.

Rhoden wondered why Nevada allowed boxing when no other state did. Earl answered, "Corruption." Nevada's economy was depressed at the time and needed revenue. He quotes Rocha saying, "We're the scourge of the nation. ... We violated the Prohibition laws. You could drink here; you could whore here. You could gamble here; you could get divorced here; you could get married here." Rhoden concludes, "Prizefighting had proven its worth as a promotional scheme. Nevada, though not Carson City, was on its way to becoming the boxing capital of the world."--MG

Civil War historian

to speak at UNLV

A leading Civil War historian is set to speak March 13 at UNLV about the general who led the North to victory. John Y. Simon, editor of the Ulysses S. Grant papers, will speak about the general and the war at 7 p.m. in the Barrick Museum Auditorium at UNLV. Admission is free.

Simon is speaking as part of the Las Vegas Civil War Round Table, recently formed to promote discussion of Civil War issues. He also will meet with UNLV classes and students. Simon is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University. He has edited the 24 volumes of the Grant papers published to date and won numerous awards for documentary editing and Civil War scholarship. He has written, edited or co-edited nine other books on the Civil War era and more than 100 articles and reviews.

For more information, call Merlin Sumner at 221-9806 or Michael Green at 651-4457.

Gov't

Wrong floor

Imagine this--the city of Las Vegas builds the new six-level Stewart Avenue parking garage, assigns 2 1/2 floors of covered parking to its able-bodied employees who buy $30 monthly permits but only use about 40 percent of the spaces, and then makes all 31 spaces allocated for employees covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act available on the top, uncovered, sun-baked level.

Nice in the winter, but it'll be egg-cookin', weenie-roastin' time in those cars a few months from now, something the city's disabled workers are certainly not looking forward to with glee.

By parking three floors up from the garage-City Hall connecting bridge, the disabled also must try to call an elevator to the top level--usually they're in heavy demand between levels 1 and 4 during peak hours--to descend to the bridge on the third level.

To make matters worse, the third-level entry doors appear not to be ADA-compliant. The first set of doors opens inward, which is okay for wheelchairs, but the second set of doors is heavy and opens outward, toward a person, which is nearly impossible for a disabled person to maneuver. In addition, there's no button or electric eye to activate the doors.--FC

Hey, transporting

nuke waste is safe

Last week's state Senate Transportation Committee hearing saw Nevada politicians meeting up with Department of Energy officials on the nuts and bolts of transporting high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Wait a sec. Considering that the state still has a bevy of lawsuits pending against the DOE, and the site has yet to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, what was up with this?

Well, it was a sort of worst-case scenario meeting--the worst case being if the DOE does end up shipping 70,000 tons of high-level nuke waste to the Nevada desert. The unsettling thing was, when senior project adviser J. Russell Dyer and his associates wound up their multimedia presentation, the Senate Transportation Committee found few chinks in the armor--save for a few pointed questions about the classified nature of the shipments, the presentation was swallowed whole. Gee, either transporting deadly nuke waste is as safe as the feds say it is, or state lawmakers need to do a bit more homework.--AK