Thursday, September 23, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Ch-ch-changes

This stuff's gotta change immediately, or, or...well, it's just

Las Vegas is best known as a city of constant change, but some things don't change fast enough. New casinos rise, politicians fall, but elsewhere in the valley, a host of minor aggravations and major headaches make for their own frustrating status quo. Sure, there are the usual suspects who scream for change--traffic woes, rampant growth and Mayor Goodman's groan-inducing "Happiest Mayor on Earth" routine--but there's plenty of less obvious stuff that needs fixing, too. The Mercury came up with five (and then some).

Beef up Nevada Ethics Commission

When the mayor harrumphs in response to charges of unethical behavior, "I'm going to run the city the way I want to run the city"--maybe the Nevada Ethics Commission needs some teeth.

When former State Board of Education member John Hawk makes $34,000 by using his position to help open a charter school and gets slapped with a mere $1,000 fine--maybe the Ethics Commission needs some teeth.

When Clark County Recorder Frances Deane still has her job--maybe the Ethics Commission needs some teeth.

And when two-thirds of ethics complaints come from Clark County and the Ethics Commission doesn't have an office here--well, that totally bites too.

The Nevada Ethics Commission has made admirable strides in recent years. As executive director Stacy Jennings tells it, when the commission was started around 1975, it didn't even have its own staff, working instead as an arm of the attorney general's office. It wasn't until 1999 that the Ethics Commission became a truly independent entity, and today has a staff of three in Carson City. Recently it got a nod from the state to hire another worker, who will headquarter in Las Vegas starting in January. But as the stucco fist of Southern Nevada grows, Jennings says the Nevada Ethics Commission faces the same problem other public entities do: catching up.

"Over the past two-year period, we've seen a 106 percent increase in the number of complaints coming in, and over two-thirds of those are from Clark County," she says.

But aside from bringing more do-good power downstate, Jennings thinks the commission is plenty strong.

"I don't think that's true [that the NCE lacks teeth]," she says. For instance, she points out that state Controller Kathy Augustine will have faced the Ethics Commission Sept. 22 on a complaint of abusing her powers of office. In Augustine's case, if she's found guilty by the commission, she could be impeached. "If she's found to have violated one of the ethics laws in one instance, because she's a constitutional officer, we'll likely refer her for impeachment. Those are pretty intimidating and dire consequences. That's not lacking teeth."

Jennings says criticism that the Ethics Commission is soft on misbehavior stems from taking individual cases of out of context. In the case of recorder Deane, Jennings says the fact that Deane was new to public office was a mitigating factor, as well as the fact that it was her first violation.

That said, the Clark County Ethics Task Force still has a few suggestions for the state Ethics Commission. Convened last year, the Ethics Task Force hammered out a list of recommendations that would tighten the ethical guidelines in Clark County; the Task Force wants the Ethics Commission to enforce them. The list of changes would have to be approved by the Legislature in 2005 to go into effect. Among them is a prohibition on elected officials in the county accepting gifts valued at more than $50 (the state's limit is $200) and tightening of the "cooling off" period for elected officials. The "cooling off" period puts a prohibition on officials who re-enter the private sector. For one year after they ceased serving in office, they cannot lobby for businesses they used to regulate. The county Ethics Task Force recommends beefing up the state's year-long "cooling off" period with additional provisions.

But ethical guidelines are just part of what needs to change. Craig Walton, emeritus professor of ethics and policy at UNLV and an Ethics Task Force member, says there's much more to be done, including a website listing all gifts to county commissioners and better citizen access to ethical watchdogging.

"One thing that's not good enough yet is public access," Walton says. "The public generally doesn't know yet how to file a complaint. All city and county offices should have ethics complaint forms available, and there should be a little booklet that says here's how you do it."

If you're the type who considers the glass half full, the recent parade of pols and public officials who've run afoul of ethics laws is a sign the system is working. But as Walton and other Ethics Task Force members point out, there's plenty of room left in that glass.--Andrew Kiraly

Cut emergency room wait times

Just keep telling yourself it's not that bad. Fall out of a moving car: Walk it off. Shoot a nail through your foot: Walk it off. Get beaned in the head with a household appliance: Walk it off. Your only other option is a trip to the closest emergency room, where you'll spend up to 10 hours waiting for treatment on a wound that may have healed by the time you actually get to see a doctor. If you're lucky, it will be midday and the TV in the waiting room will be showing back-to-back-to-back episodes of "Texas Justice"; if you're not, it will be the middle of the night and you'll be stuck watching "Kickin' It with Byron Allen."

And that's assuming you're even allowed into the ER in the first place. Last Monday, Mountain View Hospital declared an "internal disaster" and began turning away patients and ambulances until further notice. It was the fifth disaster declaration made by a Clark County hospital since April 1, but the first due to lack of beds and personnel. At the time, seven of the hospital's 22 beds were occupied by psychiatric patients. The problem: There are just too many crazy people in Southern Nevada.

"Mental health is definitely contributing to the overcrowding in Clark County emergency rooms," says Dr. Dale Carrison, director of emergency services at University Medical Center. "Like it or not, Las Vegas is a prime destination for mentally ill people. When you have that in conjunction with the population explosion, you have the makings of a potential health crisis."

Carrison says it's not unusual for local emergency rooms to be filled with as many as 80 psychiatric patients. "The average emergency department has 25 beds," he says. "That essentially means three entire departments are shut down by mental health cases."

It's even worse than that. Although doctors can often diagnose psychiatric cases in less than 20 minutes, the patients sometimes have to wait in the hospital for days before they can be transferred to the Las Vegas Mental Health Center. If, as Carrison suggests, the average ER bed can accommodate one patient every three hours, then a mental patient prevents eight people from receiving medical care every 24 hours. If the patient stays in the hospital for five days, 40 people do not get to use that bed. And if that happens in 80 beds around Las Vegas, then more than 3,000 people do not receive timely emergency treatment.

Needless to say, this isn't the fault of the psychiatric patients. Las Vegas' woeful lack of mental health facilities has been well-documented. In fact, it is the only large metropolitan city in the country without a walk-in/drop-off emergency psychiatric facility. And until this deficiency is addressed, Las Vegas emergency departments will continue to get more and more crowded with mental health cases.

"Even if we had adequate treatment options, we'd still be crowded, but it would be nothing like it is now," Carrison says. "The wait times would be reduced significantly."--Newt Briggs

Change world's stupidest sports moniker ever

It was a historic moment when, in December 2000, the local minor league baseball team changed its nickname from the Stars to the 51s. It's not unusual for a minor league team to change its name, but it is strange for the team's brain trust to choose such an incredibly lame nickname as the 51s.

Las Vegas minor league baseball fans--all 5,000 of 'em--have been suffering ever since.

The 51s nickname is the kind of idea that comes up during a brainstorming meeting. "Las Vegas is near Area 51, the super-secret air base, right? And people are fascinated by Area 51." This notion may be entertained for a few minutes--"Damn, that just might work"--but it's ultimately rejected as just too stupid to actually go with. More often than not, the guy who came up with the idea is the one who later urges it to be cast aside.

Well, in the case of the Las Vegas Stars, Mr. Brilliant didn't throw it out. He stuck with it throughout the skull session and somehow prevailed.

As noted, we've been suffering ever since.

It gets worse. The same genius who came up with the 51s nickname decided that the team's logo would feature a space alien. See, rumor has it they have dead aliens at Area 51 and they're studying them. It's all B.S., but perception is reality, right?

Adding insult to severe injury, the team's mascot is a Jar-Jar Binks ripoff named Cosmo. He's lame and, as noted, a ripoff of the ultra-lame Stars Wars character.

So, now we have a professional baseball team based in Las Vegas--famous Sin City, Entertainment Capital of the World, gambling mecca, 35 million visitors per year, regularly featured on magazine covers and cable television specials--and it is associated with a relatively small, very loony fringe subculture of "people" who think there's a giant conspiracy surrounding 100-miles-distant Area 51.

Sheer genius.

Hey, if they ever think about changing the name again, maybe they should consider something to do with Pahrump, where they have all those brothels, or Searchlight, where Sen. Harry Reid grew up, or Mesquite, where the Mormons settled. How about the Yuccas, for Yucca Mountain? Just make sure it doesn't have anything to do with Las Vegas.--Geoff Schumacher

Stop scheduling outdoor concerts in the summer

We've made a ton of adjustments to the fact that we aren't in Ipswich, Mass., anymore. Because we have a large number of people here working all hours of the day, we have 24-hour grocery stores, convenience stores, bars, department stores and even wedding chapels. To facilitate the free flow of money that the city thrives on, you can cash your paycheck at casinos. Believe it or not, there are some places in the world where a business would charge you for this favor instead of giving you a funbook and a free spin on the wheel of tchochkes.

Why, then, can't we adjust to the fact that it's fuck-all hot in the summer and not schedule outdoor events when the temperature is hotter than McDonald's coffee?

I've heard the argument that summer is when kids are off from school, which would be a fine point if most of the outdoor events didn't take place on the weekend. I can understand that summer tours make sense for a lot of the country, just not here in the land of "Hey! I can bake cupcakes in my car."

I'm not suggesting we move our summer holidays. Lord knows I wouldn't want to be celebrating Independence Day on Nov. 4. It's things like the wonderful summer concert series at the Clark County Government Center that make me crazy. The venue is great, the shows they bring in are terrific, but even though these shows usually start at 8 p.m., you need to bring a llama to carry the barrel of water required to keep from shriveling into jerky. (Don't try this, by the way, pets are not allowed and the guys at the gate wouldn't go for my seeing-eye dog comparison.)

At least some of these organizers have the sense to schedule the events for later in the day when you might have a chance to find a shadow or two to hide in, but events like the Warped Tour, an all-day music event held in an open field, are borderline criminal. I also can still recall news footage of heat-exhausted Deadheads being hosed down by the fire department.

In the spring and fall, it's hard to find better weather than here. True, there's an off chance it might get a little nippy in the evening, but there's a cure for that. There's a strange device carried by people of cooler climates, even to summer concerts. It's called a jacket.--F. Andrew Taylor

Inject some life into student life at UNLV

Let's think about reasons a prospective student might be a little wary of UNLV. It's in the middle of the ghetto. It has not even a semblance of a local, student-friendly community; nor does it have close, affordable and safe off-campus housing or even Greek houses. And the campus' haphazard layout and garishly unmatched buildings are an eyesore taken individually; as a whole they create an architectural look that screams, "Hey, we had to let the interns practice on something."

UNLV is trying. University President Carol Harter desperately wants to see UNLV become a major research U. The athletic department has tried (though it has failed miserably) to restore the Runnin' Rebels magic that Tark found (or paid for) in the early '90s. And UNLV has invested in several improved facilities recently, including Lied Library, the Beam music building and the parking garage next to Ham Hall (though, shockingly, the designs of all three of these structures in no way complement anything else near them).

Despite these efforts, with none of the amenities of a traditional college town's U-district, UNLV will never be a contender for most students who have the luxury of choosing between it and major universities. Consider cities with great downtown areas--they often have great university districts as well, and the two go hand in hand. The dearth of a hip district complete with shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and concert and entertainment venues within walking distance of the campus is a disservice not only to students, but to the rest of the Vegas community. We want students, coming from both in state and out, to want to attend UNLV. And after they've graduated, we want them to think fondly of their time here and stick around.

If Vegas is going to grow into more than a weekend playland for out-of-towners, UNLV could be one of the city's biggest assets. The time to build up a central area of the city that will attract visitors to areas other than the Strip is well past due.--Maria Phelan

As long as we're ranting...

Phew--give the Las Vegas Library to the homeless

The Las Vegas Library smells like piss. This is not a subjective opinion; it's an objective fact. Walk within 50 feet of the library's designated reading section, and the acrid scent of eau de homeless will waft into your nostrils like ragged Frenchmen storming the Bastille. The same is true of the computer section, which is always dominated by at least a half-dozen transients--most of whom don't have physical addresses but clearly have the e-mail equivalent.

And the Las Vegas Library isn't the only local book repository that's swiftly becoming ripe with more than just knowledge. Granted, homeless people have every right to use public library facilities, but I--as a lover of books and hater of stink--also have a right to enjoy the written word in olfactory comfort. Therefore, I propose that we designate the Las Vegas Library the city's first homeless library. It can follow the FUBU model: by homeless people, for homeless people. That way, the rest of the valley's libraries can go back to smelling like old people and unwashed intellectuals--just the way they should.--Newt Briggs

Someone open a real coffee shop--and keep it open

How hard can it be to run a cafe? You serve coffee. You dish out scones. You shoo away the goth kids. You throw some passably edgy local art on the walls. You help the nice man with the laptop feel like a bohemian. For all the chatter about burgeoning culture downtown and around the university district, it sure sucks that no one can keep a classic, urban independent coffee shop alive in Las Vegas.

Many have tried, and most have foundered due to bad management or simply being before their time: The Newsroom, Cafe Rainbow, Enigma, Cafe Nero, Buzzy's Espresso, Cafe Copioh...they've all gone the way of coffee grounds and fliers for last week's punk show. Hell, when longtime chain Cafe Espresso Roma was sold to a couple of local would-be indie operators more than a year ago, the place sank faster than a sugar cube in a cappuccino. Is Vegas cursed? Well, it's time the spell was broken. Can someone with a double-shot of ambition and some financial backing please get their frigging beans together?--Andrew Kiraly