Monday, Nov. 26, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.
We're still reeling from turkey overdose, so let's get right to it.
Which former county commissioner is taking a break from the homebuilding business?
Apparently, Yvonne Atkinson Gates.
After constructing her own huge home in the Ridges, an exclusive Summerlin neighborhood, she started a homebuilding business called Built By Yvonne. When she announced her March resignation in January, she said part of the reason she was stepping down was to focus on her fledgling business.
But it looks like her plans are changing. Her contractor's license was recently put on inactive status.
She didn't return a phone call from the Sun, but her former partner, Lesa McClain, said the company is no longer in business.
Why quit?
You'll recall Metro police have been investigating Atkinson Gates for some time. They want to know what happened to the $356,166 in campaign cash she paid to her son, his future wife and a company the young couple ran together.
It seems likely that part of the reason police started poking around is that home she and her husband, District Judge Lee Gates, built in Summerlin. It features 7,100 square feet of living space, and the property is valued at $2,440,683 by the county assessor. For two public servants, that's not bad.
The swirling questions surrounding the former commissioner simply got to be too much, according to McClain.
"There were too many people asking too many questions, and there was nothing there," she said. "It wasn't fun at all."
McClain said the company completed its last job in August - a home about the same size as Atkinson Gates' and also in the Ridges. It belongs to Kirby Burgess, former director of the county's juvenile justice services.
Burgess later became a senior executive with Westcare, a drug treatment agency. Atkinson Gates twice voted to award the agency county contracts without disclosing that she was working for Burgess.
So what's up with the Metro investigation of Atkinson Gates?
Police are still looking into her dealings, but Deputy Chief Mike McClary wouldn't give any details about where things stand.
What did county commissioners give the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada to be thankful for on Turkey Day?
Not much. The ACLU spoke in opposition to two measures at Tuesday's commission meeting, but both passed anyway.
The first involved proposed changes to the coroner's inquest process, at which a jury determines whether a death involving an officer is justified, excusable or criminal.
After more than a year of debate, two proposals were on the table Tuesday. Both would have substituted justices of the peace for appointed attorneys as presiding officers. Both proposals also would have allowed the Nevada attorney general's office to replace the district attorney's office as the presenter of fact and questioner of witnesses, though Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has declined to accept that role.
The proposals differed on the key issue of who would be allowed to ask witnesses follow-up questions. In the past, family members of the deceased wrote questions and submitted them to the presiding officer, who decided whether to ask them.
The ACLU-backed proposal would have allowed an attorney representing the family to question witnesses in front of the jury, though the presiding officer could still decide whether the witness had to answer.
The other proposal, backed by Metro police, would leave the process largely unchanged, except that the presiding officer would read unasked written questions into the record without the jury present.
With the exception of Lawrence Weekly and Chris Giunchigliani, commissioners voted in favor of the police-backed proposal, over the protests of the ACLU, the NAACP, the Urban League, former state Sen. Joe Neal, family members of police shooting victims and others.
"At the end of the day, the commission ignored the community input and did what the police wanted them to," said Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU. "It just reinforces the impression of the community, whether fairly or unfairly, that the whole system is rigged."
And the other issue?
If you said news rack fees, you win the opportunity to navigate a gauntlet of smut distributors on the fabulous Las Vegas Strip!
The ACLU spoke against the county's decision to quadruple fees that news rack operators on the Strip must pay, from $25 to $100 a year. Peck said any fee on free speech activities must be revenue-neutral. That means any money the county gets from the fees must be used on news rack enforcement.
The county provided a one-sheet summary of expenses, but Peck and news rack operators say that's not enough. For example, the summary doesn't break down how much of the county's enforcement activities are spent on news racks outside the resort corridor, where news rack operators are not charged a fee.
Peck said if operators of Strip news racks, which feature mostly adult-themed publications, are subsidizing the enforcement of news racks outside resort areas, which often feature news or real estate publications, that could amount to a breach of First Amendment rights.
Commissioners approved the higher fees anyway, saying they want to make sure taxpayers are not subsidizing the distribution of X-rated materials. According to the county, the new fees will cover about 80 percent of what it costs to enforce the county's news rack laws. The vast majority of that enforcement occurs on the Strip, county staff said.
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