Arena foes say petition misled signers

Workers used incomplete and misleading information to induce Nevadans to sign a petition to put a sports arena tax on a statewide ballot, opponents of the plan told the state Supreme Court.

In a brief filed earlier this week, Taxpayers for the Protection of Nevada Jobs accused signature-gatherers hired by Caesars Entertainment of duping people into signing their petition by, among other things, withholding information about the potential traffic impact of an arena. The document is part of an appeal to the Supreme Court and recycles accusations already rejected by a lower court.

The group behind it, a coalition of opponents that includes Caesars competitors MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming, wants justices to prevent an arena tax question from reaching the ballot in November 2012.

They say workers withheld from signers important information about the plan by Caesars to implement a 0.9 percentage point sales tax increase within three miles of the proposed arena site near Imperial Palace, which Caesars has agreed to donate. The tax would fund about $300 million of the approximately $500 million proposal, backers say.

Among details withheld, the brief states, was information about how the arena would affect traffic and increase the cost of consumer goods on the Strip.

“In fact, had they known the true effect of the Initiative, many of the tens of thousands of local voters who work in the area might have refused to sign the petition,” the filing states.

Scott Scherer, attorney for MGM Resorts and Boyd Gaming group, says the appeal seeks to stop the Caesars group from using ill-gotten signatures to get a bad public policy proposal on the ballot.

“It doesn’t belong on the ballot in the first place,” Scherer said. “It is effectively raising taxes in the area for an arena to benefit one particular entity.”

That’s bunk, say backers of the arena petition, one of several stadium proposals floated in recent months for locations near the Strip, downtown and on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus.

They say if anyone misunderstands the arena tax proposal, it’s the opposition, not voters who signed the petitions.

“These are basically the same arguments they made in the trial court,” said former Clark County Commission member Bruce Woodbury, chairman of the Las Vegas Arena Foundation, the group backing the arena. “Practically everybody who signed this petition knew exactly what they were signing. It was there in black and white.”

Arena proposal backers point to the decision from Carson City District Court Judge Todd Russell that states the petition was legitimate.

“While some signers may have felt the circulators misrepresented the petition to them, they only had to read the document themselves to determine its true content,” Russell wrote.

The group also accuses signature-gatherers of filing affidavits falsely stating they collected signatures themselves. According to the group, the signature-gatherers worked in teams, and the team member who signed the affidavit might not have gathered all the signatures.

But arena backers point out they only needed about 97,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, but collected more than 200,000, suggesting even if some signatures are invalid there remains enough support to send the issue to voters.

Danny Thompson, secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO and a member of the arena foundation, said it is important to the economy for the group to successfully defend the arena proposal.

“It was above board and this challenge to the Supreme Court is a waste of time. The only way to solve the state’s problems is to put people back to work. And delaying this won’t do that.”

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at
bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.