Saturday, March 1, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
IT was a week in which the casino industry accepted accolades for stepping to the plate first as Southern Nevada searches to find funding for its massive growth needs.
Ordinarily, that would be a good thing. Gaming should take the lead in such an endeavor. It is, after all, the industry that profits the most from the economic boom here.
But the grand announcement was overshadowed by a nasty undercurrent that threatened to undermine a trio of county commissioners -- Yvonne Atkinson Gates, Myrna Williams and Mary Kincaid -- who've been trying to put a comprehensive infrastructure plan together.
While casino bosses took the high road by agreeing to a room tax hike that would contribute $30 million to the effort, the county commissioners were attacked by media pundits and state lawmakers aligned with the casino industry and deposed County Manager Pat Shalmy.
The three commissioners, the new center of power at the county, were ridiculed as incompetent (the Three Musketeers mind you) by one media jackal who makes a living off his casino industry newsletter subscribers.
Another media mouthpiece, one of those know-it-all television guys, took great pride in pointing out that he was the first to rip into Gates, who chairs the County Commission. He complimented the other mouthpiece for jumping on the bandwagon. Then, he proceeded to viciously bash Gates again.
Gates, Williams and Kincaid all have been in politics for a long time. They're not as evil as the casino lapdogs have made them out to be. Unlike some of their cohorts at the county in the past, the three women aren't in this business to enrich themselves. They simply want to serve the public.
All three have undertaken an endeavor (finding the right sources of funding to meet Southern Nevada's growth) that should have been launched four years ago when the County Commission was controlled by those no longer in power.
As the attacks mounted, it wasn't hard for Gates and company to theorize who was behind them.
The No. 1 suspect was Shalmy, who announced his resignation last month after 12 years at the helm when he saw he no longer had the confidence of the majority of commissioners.
No. 2 on the list were casino industry political operatives concerned that gaming might be called upon to pay more for infrastructure in the grand scheme of things.
"This is all about power," says one of the commissioners who was blasted last week. "The people who have had power in the county for a long period of time are losing it now, and they don't like it."
There may be some merit to that argument.
But Shalmy insists he's done nothing at all to undermine Gates and her colleagues.
And one gaming lobbyist, Billy Vassiliadis, says it's "nonsense" to suggest anyone from gaming would want to undermine Gates.
Shalmy, meanwhile, acknowledges having conversations last week with Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas, chairman of the Infrastructure Committee, who also lashed out at Gates.
But he says he merely told Goldwater that Gates has been keeping him out of the loop, as she and Williams sought to put the county plan together.
That obviously didn't sit well with Goldwater, who says he's been kept in the dark, too. Goldwater, after all, will have to take the lead on infrastructure as it's debated at the Legislature.
"Nobody knows what's going on," Goldwater says. "We're dying to work with Yvonne and the entire County Commission, but she's not working with us."
Gates and Williams say they've tried to keep as many people as possible up to speed on their efforts. But there are many competing forces at work here, from balancing the interests of the average citizens, to those in big business, gaming and development.
They say they weren't ready to give Goldwater a full-blown briefing.
Shalmy says he's offered to lend his experience to the project and wants to play a role in putting the plan together, even after he leaves the manager's office in April.
His services could prove invaluable and should be considered by Gates.
But that won't happen as long as the mistrust between Gates and Shalmy continues.
Shalmy also has to persuade incoming County Manager Dale Askew, the eventual point man in the project, that he doesn't have an ulterior motive in volunteering to help. Shalmy has yet to announce his future career plans. But he hinted last week it might involve some consulting. For who is the big question.
Shalmy also has to realize that what happened to Gates, Williams and Kincaid last week was not uncommon during his tenure in office.
County Commissioner Don Schlesinger suffered through similar media attacks when he wouldn't play ball with Shalmy and the movers and shakers.
The preferred method of operation over the years has been to get media cronies to marginalize commissioners not on the team and render them ineffective.
In Schlesinger's case, it worked.
Schlesinger, who now appears to have been a couple of years ahead of his time, ended up losing his re-election bid in 1994. But some now are suggesting he should run for his old seat in 1998 with his chief adversaries out of the way.
And guess what? Schlesinger, who's become an expert of sorts on infrastructure, says he "would never say never" about running for his old seat.
The marginalization game is not likely to work with Gates, because she's at the center of power now.
Whether Gates and Shalmy can patch things up remains to be seen.
But as long as Gates finds herself the brunt of criticism from Shalmy-aligned media pundits, there's little chance of Shalmy participating in the infrastructure project on the county's behalf.
As for Gates, she has her faults like everyone else.
If the residents of Clark County, however, are going to get the kind of representation they deserve from their government, the old guard is going to have to stop being dragged out the door kicking and screaming.
Give the new kids on the block a chance to do something.
One political insider may have hit things on the head by suggesting that the crux of last week's nasty bickering stems from a lack of cohesiveness in the infrastructure effort.
"There's been no communication between legislators and local officials," the politico says. "There's no sense that anybody's working together."
Late in the week, that may have begun to change.
Gates had a lengthy telephone conservation with Goldwater, who also planned to sit down with Williams over the weekend.
But the media mouthpieces of the movers and shakers probably will find something wrong with that, too.
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