City, Culinary make final arguments; Friday ruling likely

By Sam Skolnik

Thursday, April 16, 2009 | 6:17 p.m.

Attorneys for the city of Las Vegas and the Culinary Union took what might be their final chance to argue whether two union-sponsored ballot measures, designed to change the way the city pursues its development efforts, should make it onto the city’s ballot.

In essence, unless the state Supreme Court has time to weigh a possible appeal, the fate of the expensive new city hall project pushed passionately by Mayor Oscar Goodman is at stake.

The hearing Thursday afternoon took three hours, and District Judge David Barker had made it clear that he wanted to finish arguments before him today so that he can rule by Friday afternoon.

This theoretically would allow either side the chance to appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court in time for them to issue an opinion by April 22 – the date absentee ballots are printed for the city’s June 2 general election.

At issue are an initiative and a referendum that the City Council recently stopped from being on the ballot. The initiative would mandate that lease-purchase agreements – such as the one for the proposed new city hall – be put to voters. The referendum would scrap the city’s current redevelopment plan.

On Wednesday the city’s attorneys said Goodman would be testifying – and Goodman himself promised after that hearing that he would use the opportunity to rail against the Culinary as “evil” extortionists.

Alas, Goodman didn’t make it to Thursday’s hearing. No explanation was given as to why.

The parties used Thursday’s hearing as a chance to sum up their cases. The city seemed to dominate the argument, perhaps because it had two attorneys arguing for it – City Attorney Brad Jerbic and private appellate attorney Daniel Polsenberg – as well as Mark Ferrario, who argued for a downtown business group allied with the city.

By contrast, Richard McCracken was the sole litigator for the Culinary.

McCracken hammered home the union’s argument that state law clearly says that parties have a right to challenge ballot measures – but only after voters have had a chance to weigh in. The law says that if the sponsoring party has received enough valid signatures, as the Culinary did, that the relevant municipal government “shall” put the measure on the ballot, he said.

He argued that the city has used “the kitchen sink approach,” using every legal stratagem it can think of, be it valid or not, to fight the measures.

Jerbic responded by arguing that “plain words have plain meaning.” He said this meant in part that Barker needed to look closely at the 1995 opinion by then-state Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, which stemmed from a situation much like the one in question.

Del Papa agreed with the city that voters should not get to have their say, and that the 1995 referendum in question was unconstitutional because it would have impaired existing contracts between the redevelopment agency and its bondholders.

Jerbic and Polsenberg pounded home that theme, claiming that once bondholders recognized that their contracts with the city could be impaired or outright negated, it could be a “catastrophe” for the city.