Columnist Jon Ralston: Unlikely five to settle casino ruckus

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sunn o on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at [email protected].

To truly comprehend the lunacy fueling the latest neighborhood casino debate, consider this: A panel with no rules, no elected officials and no time for serious deliberation will decide the fate not just of a proposed Spring Valley resort but also of whether the valley will surrender any chance of keeping gaming out of residential areas.

This issue is much larger than County Commissioner Lance Malone's imitation of a protesting monk -- his attempted self-immolation may have resulted in a scorched earth campaign against him, but that has only short-term ramifications.

In the long run, a bizarre animal known as the Gaming Policy Committee review panel, a creature of a vestigial state body, will have a disproportionate impact on what has metastasized from a zoning decision to an outcome that could affect the overall quality of life in Southern Nevada.

Just the melodramatic musings of a feverish pundit, you say? Perhaps. But if this unaccountable five-member panel paves the way for the casino project now owned by Triple Five and ultimately by Boyd Gaming if it is ever built, every vacant piece of land in Clark County then becomes a potential casino site. Such is the precedent set by the Clark County Commission last month by overriding a 1997 state law.

It was truly painful to watch the review panel struggle for nearly two hours Monday to determine what it can and cannot do in the absence of precedents or guidelines because the policy committee has not met in a decade.

Chairman Brian Sandoval, who also presides over the Gaming Commission, strained to find middle ground with colleagues who include the state's other top regulator, Gaming Control Board Chairman Steve DuCharme, two citizen appointees and one tribal designee who wasn't there.

The five folks must hold a hearing next week on a 3,000-page record of county decision-making on the Triple Five project and then render a decision within 30 days, as per that 1997 law.

Amid Monday's mind-numbing procedural arguments, mostly designed to create a record for expected lawsuits, was an attempt by Triple Five and county advocates to insist that citizens protesting the project were not technically "aggrieved," as the statute demands, because of where they live.

But what was clear from Monday's Tylenol-required hearing was that there are three potentially aggrieved parties here: Triple Five, other neighborhood casino developers and the Citizens of Spring Valley Association. (The silliest moments in Monday's hearing came when county attorney Rob Warhola tried to insist that he should get equal time at next week's meeting because the county and the developer do not have the same interest in the case. That's like arguing that the citizens group and the competing neighborhood casino developers don't have the same interest.)

Triple Five attorney Mark Fiorentino, sitting next to two Boyd executives, clearly intends to run out the clock as fast as he can, making it as difficult as possible for the policy committee to overturn the county's decision.

Station Casinos, which had a couple of unobtrusive representatives at the hearing, is dedicated to overturning the county's decision and defeating Malone, who not once, not twice but thrice committed to vote against the project before publicly and inexplicably reneging. But if the Triple Five/Boyd project does survive the policy review panel and any court actions, Station will be right there looking at some of those vacant parcels. Politics may be politics, but business is business.

Finally, these citizens are not your average protesters. Sure, they are being propped up by financing from Station and others. But they are unusually aggressive and have unusually aggressive lawyers. The residents not only are running newspaper and perhaps TV ads, they are researching personal, financial and political information of the three commissioners who voted for the project.

Malone's problems won't go away soon. But no matter who sits in that seat come 2001, the commission, which could be aided and abetted by this strange legislative monstrosity, could be responsible for ensuring that gaming truly is a part of every valley community.

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