Las Vegas Convention Center security officers left their taxpayer-funded posts to drive former Mayor Oscar Goodman across the valley far more often than officials previously disclosed.
Investigations
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s lawyer has received a 7.5 percent salary increase and a 25 percent bonus from the organization’s board of directors.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority hired an accounting firm Tuesday to evaluate its spending policies after a Review-Journal investigation uncovered questionable expenses.
Around 2010, Elko schools halted a longtime practice of hiring retirees and paying them a salary while they collected a pension.
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who is charged with policing statements that disclose the income of elected officials, failed to report her own pension income of about $11,000 over the past two years.
Nevada governments are using the underfunded state pension system to boost the income of public employees, a legal practice that costs taxpayers at least $23 million a year, a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation found.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority security officers, paid by taxpayers and charged with protecting visitors, drive CEO Rossi Ralenkotter and and former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman to casinos, shops and other locations so often that staff members dubbed the dispatches “Rossi runs” and “Oscar runs” in security logs obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Excessive spending at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority highlights the need for a special agency to investigate financial abuse within state and local government, Democratic and Republican lawmakers say.
An anonymous tipster informed Nevada Transportation Authority Deputy Commissioner Chris Schneider about the drunken driving arrests of an agency supervisor nearly two months before the staff member crashed a state vehicle, records show.
The supervisor of a former Nevada Transportation Authority officer with a history of drunken driving arrests allowed him to take sick leave to serve his jail sentence — a violation of state policy, records show.
A former state transportation officer with a history of drunken driving arrests was in jail Friday after using drugs, which was prohibited under the terms of his pre-trial release, authorities said.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s audit committee chairman said internal reviews did not flag questionable expenses uncovered in a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation before the story ran. But he is planning a change that might scrutinize similar spending in the future.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s top executive criticized a Review-Journal investigative reporter for seeking an interview at the personal residence of the organization’s chief financial officer.
The vice chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board of directors on Tuesday defended the agency’s spending to attract visitors to Southern Nevada.
Assembly Republicans received instructions Wednesday not to talk to the Las Vegas Review-Journal about its investigation of lavish spending by the publicly funded Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.