Cost of Tyson hearings depleting Nevada Athletic Commission budget

Marc Ratner, the commission's executive director, said an $18,500 emergency appropriation is needed to keep the panel from going broke by late March.

"Obviously we were not budgeted to pay for this," said Ratner. "We did not have the legal right to ask him to pay for the hearings."

But that could change. The commission has requested a bill that would allow costs of future hearings to be collected from fighters asking for a license.

The unanticipated costs included rent for a hearing room big enough to handle a crowd of more than 300, including 135 members of the media, Ratner told the Senate Finance Committee.

Tyson's license was suspended after he bit Evander Holyfield during a June 1997 title bout won by Holyfield. The Athletic Commission voted 4-1 to restore Tyson's boxing license in October 1998.

"At least you won't have the cost of another Tyson hearing for another year," said Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, referring to the boxer's most recent jailing.

Tyson pled no contest to two counts of second-degree assault and was sentenced earlier this month to one year in jail for assaulting a motorist after a car accident in Maryland.

Tyson, 32, was still on probation from a 1991 rape conviction, and authorities in Indiana must decide if he has violated the terms of his probation there. Tyson was released in 1995 after serving three years of a six-year sentence, and his probation was set to expire in March.

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