The transparent sham of the 'public meeting'

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:29:46 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JULY 12, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The transparent sham of the 'public meeting'

Robert Held's frustration was obvious as the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously last week to give Southwest Sports Group -- owners of the Texas Rangers, and Held's competitor -- first dibs on developing the 61-acre Union Pacific parcel downtown.

"It's a little disappointing and a little surprising," said the CEO of Held Properties, a Los Angeles-based firm which specializes in building medical centers. "We were the only respondent that followed the guidelines set by the mayor. There was nothing about baseball fields."

Mayor Oscar Goodman -- who says he'd still be happy to negotiate with the Held group should the deal with Southwest Sports fall through -- explains he was convinced of the viability of the winners' plan to anchor their downtown residential, retail, and medical campus plan with a baseball stadium after touring a similar project the group is building on a distressed parcel in Dallas.

In its presentation before the council last week, Southwest Sports Group said its plans hinge on public funding for a new downtown stadium for the minor-league Las Vegas 51s. But Mayor Goodman contended Thursday the council vote -- unanimous with two abstentions and with Councilman Michael Mack curiously absent -- does not constitute an endorsement of the baseball stadium.

An apparent example of cognitive dissonance that brings us to the main issue here, which is not so much which proposal was chosen -- that choice is well within the council's discretion -- as the nature of the public debate which preceded the vote.

And the nature of that public debate was -- there wasn't any public debate.

Everyone involved agrees the choice of who will develop the last remaining large vacant parcel of downtown land could impact the city's future for a generation. It's no secret the bid of the Southwest Sports Group benefited from the strong local ties of Don Logan, president of the 51s (formerly the Las Vegas Stars, since renamed in a search for greater obscurity) and a longtime acquaintance of several council members.

Also no secret was the advocacy of Councilman Larry Brown for the baseball project -- Brown abstained from voting on the project because his marketing efforts for the 51s are widely acknowledged to have served as a "door opener" for the Texas group.

Let's not be naive. Such "juice" often has much to do with the way such decisions are made in the political arena. Better to have such influence out in the open than to pretend otherwise.

But the intent of Nevada's open meeting law is that Messrs. Logan and Brown should have sat down with the four council members who were eventually to cast the crucial votes, at a scheduled meeting which the public and the competing bidders were free to attend, and argued their case, made their offer, pitched their woo ... in public.

One can well imagine the haranguing, the debate, the discussion of vested interests and pros and cons, of parking and traffic jams and the wisdom or futility of tax subsidies stretching on for many hours, as jackets came off and ties were loosened, visions of the city's future were alternatively praised as visionary of ridiculed as pipe dreams, as staff members were dispatched for pizza and sandwiches and Coke and the debate stretched into the wee hours of the morning.

That's the way important public questions used to be resolved in this country, back when government was considered to be a participatory sport, when everyday citizens would actually turn out to watch and join in such debates, because they believed there was really going to be a debate.

Instead, this decision, so vital to the city's future, was made last Thursday in five minutes, without a question being asked, without a shred of debate.

Does anyone believe that? That Messrs. Logan and Brown didn't spend hours attempting to convince Mayor Goodman and Councilmen Weekly, McDonald and Reese of the merits of their proposal?

Of course they did. They just did it in secret, where neither the public nor interested competitors like Mr. Held could raise inconvenient questions about whether the project can go ahead without a tax-subsidized stadium, and how the politicians can claim to endorse the proposal while pretending they haven't at the same time made a commitment to push for tax funding of that same stadium ... all left for a later day when, after a long and ritualized mating dance, they will pretend to "reluctantly come to the conclusion, after examining all the options, that there's no other way ..."

The Council members are just common folk; no one expects their decision-making to be perfect. They're just supposed to let us in on the process.

In a free society where the public is expected to pay their taxes based on the premise that they're part of the process -- that they at least get to see what's going on -- it would be the decent and sensible thing to do.

It's also required by law.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

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Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

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The transparent sham of the 'public meeting'