Want to open a pawnshop? FBI might soon want to know

By Sam Skolnik

Friday, Aug. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

What do psychics, ice cream truck operators and strip club owners have in common?

All are mentioned in a Las Vegas City Council bill that targets 15 types of businesses for FBI scrutiny.

The bill, proposed by City Attorney Brad Jerbic at Wednesday’s council meeting, would mandate that applicants for business licenses in these job categories be required to have their fingerprints run through an FBI database.

Currently, potential city employees must submit to an FBI fingerprint check. They must also allow for state and federal criminal records checks, and to have their photo taken.

That law would be amended to mandate that fingerprints of business license applicants in specified categories be forwarded to the Central Repository for Nevada Records of Criminal History, and then to the FBI for its report on the applicant.

The 15 categories of businesses include strip clubs, massage parlors, bars, casinos, pawnshops and businesses that serve children, such as ice cream trucks and martial arts studios. The list also includes, perhaps oddly, psychics.

The purpose of the amended law would be to help the city “determine suitability for licensing relative to the specified type of business,” the bill states.

Jerbic did not return several calls for comment.

There was no public comment on the bill during the council meeting. The measure will go before a recommending committee, then back to the council for a vote.

• • •

When Las Vegas gets its chance to lobby state legislators early next year on the topics it deems most important, one will involve incentives for redeveloping downtown.

The exact wording of the bill draft hasn’t been finalized. But according to Scott Adams, director of the city’s Business Development Office, and Ted Olivas, the city’s top lobbyist, the bill will propose to extend the life of the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency past its current expiration date of 2031.

This would allow the city to issue 20-year bonds for at least another several years, allowing more flexibility for development projects.

The bill also would extend the ability of municipalities throughout the state to create tourism improvement districts, which can use special bonds that capture a portion of sales tax generated by a project and feed it back to the project’s developer.

Only two TIDs exist in Nevada, according to Adams, both in Northern Nevada — though one is in the works for the CIM Group project to develop the area near the Lady Luck.

Under the current law, all new TIDs have to be in place by October of next year.

“This (bill) ... allows us to be creative” when trying to lure businesses to come to the city, Adams said.

• • •

It’s Las Vegas week on a new Web site called Moment of Thanks, momentofthanks.com.

The nonprofit site, which was unveiled July 4, carries short videos and written messages of thanks and support to the U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, from such folks as politicians, athletes and entertainers.

A video crew was in Las Vegas recently and taped messages from some typical Vegas characters, including the cast of “Star Trek: The Experience,” an Elvis impersonator and Mayor Oscar Goodman.

In his nearly two-minute video, the mayor paid tribute to America’s armed forces and noted that his middle son, Ross, now a Las Vegas lawyer, served in the Marine Corps and later as a Marine reservist.

“That particular moment when he commissioned as a second lieutenant, that had to be one of the happiest moments of my life,” Goodman recalled.

The site is the brainchild of Stacey Artandi, the creator of a Web site called shezoom.com.