Sunday, Jan. 23, 2000 | 8:56 a.m.
Multimillionaire James Rogers owns television stations, runs banks and donates fortunes to universities. He could literally ride off into the sunset on one of his Tennessee walking horses.
But the trained lawyer, a blunt and volatile perfectionist and taskmaster, instead galloped into the spotlight by offering to run the Clark County School District as interim superintendent.
With a reputation as an inquisitive man who can turn complex problems into simple solutions, Rogers is a "quick study" who can ably tackle school budget, staffing and construction problems. So say academicians, elected officials and business associates.
"This is a guy who really believes that education is the path to success," said Joel Seligman, dean of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. "He's about as smart a man as I've ever met. I've discussed huge problems with him, and he'd get to the core of it in a matter of minutes."
But some former employees of his Sunbelt Communications media conglomerate described the 61-year-old Rogers as a "tyrant" with a short fuse who treats rank-and-file workers shabbily. They predicted he would get frustrated with the bureaucracy that makes up the nation's eighth-largest school district and have a tough time answering to the Clark County School Board.
"I would never work for a man like that again," one former employee said. "He treats people like meat. People are only tools through which he makes a profit."
Rogers has virtually no hands-on experience as an educator, save for a yearlong stint as a teaching fellow at an Illinois law school in the 1960s. But the father of three grown children is one of the city's wealthiest businessmen, a self-made man with a net worth reportedly exceeding $300 million. He said he was born with business sense.
"I always tell my people to go to school and get the best toolbox you can get," he said. "The key is how you use the tools."
When the School Board began fumbling in its search for a successor to Superintendent Brian Cram, who is retiring in July, Rogers offered his services for a year or two at no salary. He figures he knows how to run a large operation efficiently. He believes he'd work well with the School Board and adjust to the bureaucracy despite his doubters.
"I don't consider myself a scholar," he said. "I'm really a builder."
Rogers said he can help the school district get its "house in order" fiscally, even though he has yet to study its budget. He speculated that the reason Nevada remains one of the few states that does not allocate state money for public school construction is that the school district has failed to prove that it spends its own funds efficiently.
"My initial impression is that this district is underfunded, but it won't be adequately funded until it is able to convince the Legislature and the governor that it is an efficient operation that doesn't waste money," Rogers said.
But he termed as "dangerous" proposals such as one offered by Assemblywoman Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, to split up the district.
"The dangers of splitting is that you'll have districts split between the people who have money and the people who don't," Rogers said. "You will have districts competing for teachers, and the one with more money will have better teachers. As the other district gets left behind the worse it will get."
Rogers, an advocate of further class-size reduction, also said teachers are underpaid. He doesn't think a superintendent should be around for more than five years because he said he can run out of fresh ideas. But he believes the county should pay its superintendent at least $400,000 annually, more than double Cram's salary, in order to attract top-notch candidates.
"Here's a person with a $1.5 billion budget who, if he's really good, could save his salary 50 times over with three good business decisions," Rogers said.
One of the district's glaring weaknesses is that it has one of the steepest high school dropout rates in the nation.
"The good students who come out of here can compete with anybody, but then it drops off precipitously," Rogers said. "Once you get past the top students it's a pretty mediocre-to-bad product."
Though not an educator, Rogers argued he is no stranger to education. As the nation's foremost law school philanthropist he has contributed or pledged about $170 million to universities such as his alma mater, the University of Arizona, which named its law school after him.
He also is one of the leading backers of UNLV's William F. Boyd School of Law. He's a board trustee at seven universities from Las Vegas to New York City, and served as keynote speaker at an annual meeting of law school deans in New Mexico last year.
University of Arizona President Peter Likins said Rogers easily could kick his feet up on his desk or spend his days yachting "but he's a committed public servant." Likins believes Rogers would make a sound interim superintendent because "he's not trying to enhance himself or enrich himself" professionally.
"He's just a citizen trying to help out during a period of need," Likins said.
Much of Rogers' passion for education came from his mother, Lucille, who taught second grade at Paradise Elementary School in Las Vegas for 36 years. Room 13, where she taught, now serves as a temporary office for Richard Morgan, the UNLV law school dean who wrote the School Board in support of Rogers.
"I don't think Jim has a belief that he can go into the classroom and teach or tell teachers how to teach," Morgan said. "But he has the business skills to run the administrative side. I don't think he would meddle in the classroom because he has great respect for teachers."
A native of Louisville, Ky., Rogers moved with his middle-class family to Las Vegas in 1953 at age 15 and graduated from Las Vegas High School a year after Cram. His father, Frank, who died in 1994, worked as a deputy project manager at the Nevada Test Site and later was a Centel vice president.
Rogers began practicing law in Las Vegas in 1964, specializing in divorce cases, personal injury claims and business transactions. Fifteen years later he acquired KVBC Channel 3, an NBC network affiliate.
"If you're a good lawyer, you're interested in your community," Rogers said. "One of the most direct ways is to be involved with the media."
He eventually took on a business partner, fabled local attorney Louis Wiener, who became his best friend. Wiener, who died in 1996, represented such personalities as Flamingo casino founder Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, entertainer Frank Sinatra, and billionaires Howard Hughes and Kirk Kerkorian. Wiener's daughter, state Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, said Rogers convinced her to run for office in 1996 even though her father had just died.
"He's a good friend, and he's certainly supportive," she said of Rogers. "He's supportive of the things I take on legislatively. He's been very loyal to me."
Catching lightning in a bottle, as Rogers has said in the past, his television station business grew along with the city. He now operates eight stations in five Western states, reaching about 2 million viewers. He oversees about 600 employees and an annual operating budget he said was somewhat below $100 million without getting more specific.
Rogers' other business experience has been in banking. He served on the boards of Nevada National and Security Pacific banks. He founded Community Bank of Nevada and then left there to form Nevada First Bank in 1998, where he remains chairman.
"He's got energy that exceeds anyone I've worked with before," Nevada First Bank President Dennis Guldin said. "He's constantly trying to find better ways to do things. He delegates, but he's also a hands-on person. He lets you know he'll challenge you."
Described by friends and critics alike as a blunt and tough businessman, Rogers also can be passionately opinionated. He sees himself as a crusader influenced by a Methodist upbringing in which "right and wrong were emphasized on every issue."
But even he conceded he may have gone "overboard" in his TV editorials against Miriam Shearing in her 1992 campaign against fellow Clark County District Judge Charles Thompson for a seat on the Nevada Supreme Court.
Rogers caught flak from Shearing, who accused him of mudslinging on behalf of Thompson, one of Wiener's former law partners. Shearing won the election but that did not stop Rogers from editorializing against her.
He does have the capacity to make peace with former targets of his barbs, however. He once called for the removal of Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa because of her role in a messy dispute involving then-Washoe County Judge Jerry Whitehead that sullied the reputation of the state supreme court.
Del Papa and Rogers now serve together on the UNLV law school advisory board and are good friends. The attorney general, in fact, called Rogers to lend support to his offer to become interim superintendent. Rogers said his criticisms of others are usually over issues, not personalities, which is why he believes he can mend fences.
"I'm just very, very impressed with his commitment to the university, with his knowledge of how the educational system works," Del Papa said. "He has a good mix of skills that could be used on an interim basis."
During a recent interview at Channel 3, Rogers' phone constantly rang. He's remarkably accessible for a man of his wealth. He fields calls almost daily regarding his philanthropy. During one brief call he interrupted an interview and matter-of-factly pledged $250,000, instructing only that no more than $50,000 be given per year. He then resumed the interview without missing a beat.
His office, a shrine to Western lore, reflects his childhood in New Mexico, where he fell in love with cowboy movies and the wide-open landscape of the West. There are rifles and pearl-handled revolvers. There are bronze sculptures of cowboys and Native Americans by famed artist Frederic Remington. Enclosed in a glass case is a beige Stetson autographed by Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry and other Western movie stars. The walls are covered with Western-themed paintings.
His passion for things Western extends to his support of the annual Lone Pine Film Festival in California, where many of the most famous cowboy pictures were shot. He also contributes money for the restoration of rare cowboy movies and raises 10 horses on a ranch in Idaho.
Antique automobiles are another passion; he has 110. One of his favorites is a 1932 Cadillac V-16, a four-door roadster valued at about $200,000.
He conceded that his passionate side can sometimes get away from him. He is a man who, in his own words, runs on two speeds. He can go from calm to rage faster than a Ferrari does zero to 60.
"I understand as well as anybody what my shortcomings are," Rogers said. "I am volatile. There's no question of that. That's one of my bad characteristics."
His newsroom tantrums are legendary, according to former employees. He frequently has berated workers in front of their colleagues. One such tongue-lashing occurred when an employee made a disparaging remark about Las Vegas tennis star Andre Agassi, a friend and business associate of the Rogers family.
He also reamed an on-air personality for misreporting the amount of money collected at a charity event Agassi sponsored, even though the error in the tele-script was not made by the person who read it over the airwaves.
"He's a vile individual," a former employee said. "He's very heavy-handed. He verbally just rips people to shreds if you step on the toes of someone who is a friend of his or he perceives as a friend of his."
Rogers also has a penchant for cleanliness that goes far beyond typical newsroom operations, former employees said. He has suspended employees for eating at their desks. There once was an edict that all drinks taken to a desk had to have lids on them.
He also has been known to sweep papers off what he perceives to be a messy desk, only to demand that the employee pick the papers off the floor and maintain a clean work station.
"While Jim can be very tough and emotional at times over things that can be mundane, like the cleanliness of the newsroom, he can be a good person to work for," a former employee said. "I felt that Jim was fair with me. But it was a common complaint among employees that they could go elsewhere and make more money, so they did."
Rogers conceded his fondness for neatness, so much so that he opened his desk drawers to reveal the orderliness of the contents inside. There is not a single stack of papers on his desk. In fact, he has only a single file drawer. He equates worker neatness with the ability to concentrate on the job at hand.
"I really believe in order," he said. "I don't like messiness. You ought to be able to find your paperwork."
Though there have been reports of increasingly high turnover at Channel 3, not all former employees bad-mouth Rogers. Former Channel 3 anchor Gwen Castaldi, now news director of Fox affiliate KVVU Channel 5, said Rogers was fair with her and that she left on good terms.
"The guy is a very vibrant guy," Castaldi said. "He's a very tough, very strong administrator who believes in doing things right."
One thing Rogers said he would not become is the second coming of fellow Republican Kenny Guinn, who came out of retirement to run UNLV as interim president for the 1994-95 school year. Guinn, a former county school superintendent, banker and utility executive, used his UNLV stint as a springboard into politics and was elected governor in 1998.
Rogers, who describes himself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, said he has no interest in politics. If chosen interim superintendent, he said he would take 90 days to "figure out what is going on," and nine months to develop a plan. After serving, he said he would return to running his businesses.
"I won't take it for more than two years because I don't want a new career," he said.
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