With the Nevada legislature not in session, it’s been left to the Clark County Commission to debate the proposed $750-million-plus subsidy for a Las Vegas stadium for the Oakland Raiders. They did so yesterday, and of the seven commission members, two asked lots of questions about the deal:
A barrage of questions came from Commissioners Marilyn Kirkpatrick and Chris Giunchigliani…“It gives a lot of authority to one group of folks to determine … how the dollars are spent, all of those leases that are created early on, and a lot of the protections I think we need as a county on the bonding are done by somebody else without any input from us,” [Kirkpatrick] said after the meeting. “None of that said they had to live in Nevada. There was a lot of detail left out on who can actually sit on that authority.”
Kirkpatrick added she wanted to see language guaranteeing Nevada workers the bulk of the jobs created by the stadium project.
Giunchigliani, who has opposed public financing for the stadium, said she needed more information about the proposed hotel room tax increase. The commissioner added that she would rather see Adelson put his entire $650 million stake into the project before the county began paying.
Those are questions, all right. They’re not any of the questions that they should be asking — like “Is it really worth it to Clark County to put $750 million in tax money into this?” or “When are we going to see a proposed lease so we know whether taxpayers will be on the hook for future maintenance and upgrade costs?” — but it’s more than commission chair Steve Sisolak, who was on the appointed task force that proposed this deal and was in the position of defending it, or the other four commissioners, who “were near silent on the matter” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, would-be stadium subsidy recipient Sheldon Adelson’s pet newspaper.
Or if you want alternative coverage, here’s an entire report from KSNV-TV that thinks that the appointed task force consisting largely of casino executives is a county “tourism committee.” I’m done, see you tomorrow.