Sands execs want room tax revenues to ease our transportation pains

Sources confirmed The Venetian is considering underwriting the costs of a ballot initiative for 2008 to take "new" room tax revenues and put it into solving our killer transportation problems. Specifics of the ballot question haven’t been worked out yet, but that’s the gist of it.

Ron Reese, spokesman for the company, said, "Sands officials decline to confirm or deny" what my sources are saying.

While it’s possible the company will decide against going to the public with a ballot initiative, giving up is not owner Sheldon Adelson’s bare-knuckle style.

With so many new high-end rooms opening or planned, expansions at The Venetian and Wynn and new construction with Echelon Place and MGM Mirage’s CityCenter, some estimate "new" room taxes might raise as much as $200 million a year for transportation needs. To make it more palatable, might some money also go to education? Maybe.

Adelson and Las Vegas Sands President Bill Weidner haven’t been shy about their disdain for the convention authority. Their position has long been that the 50-year-old authority (with an annual budget of nearly $280 million from room taxes) has outlived its usefulness and the advertising efforts of the individual properties bring plenty of visitors to Southern Nevada.

Did I mention that the Sands Expo and Convention Center is a competitor of the room tax funded convention center?

Weidner wrote an opinion piece published May 20 in the Review-Journal. He said polls show more than 70 percent of Nevadans favor diverting some room tax money to pay for tourism infrastructure. By 2012, Las Vegas will have 40,000 new rooms in Las Vegas "and the room tax is expected to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue. We should now use this opportunity to fundamentally re-evaluate the role of the room tax and expand the definition of tourism support to include the physical infrastructure needed to ensure its continued growth."

When Weidner wrote this, Gov. Jim Gibbons had proposed taking an average of $53 million a year for eight years from the authority to fund transportation. Legislators felt the authority’s pain.

In the end, the Legislature approved a bill to take an additional $20 million a year from room tax dollars, on top of taking taxes from rental car companies and local governments. It would raise enough to pay for $1 billion in bonds, although the transportation shortfall is $5 billion.

Currently, $47 million of the room tax dollars go to Clark County for transportation.

If the Sands goes forward with this, expect a bloodbath. For now, authority spokesman Vince Alberta said he would not comment on rumors and speculation.

It would be incredibly easy to persuade voters that the best way to pay for roads is to take from the convention authority, which is funded through the room taxes, because it’s the perfect tax: The one locals don’t pay, but tourists do pay.

If the Regional Transportation Board comes up with a ballot question asking voters to raise their own taxes for transportation, voters are far more likely to say, "No way. Take it from the authority."

An advertising war will break out as the authority argues that it brings plenty of tourist dollars to Southern Nevada and that the high costs of advertising pay off.

The Sands will counter that those folks would come here anyway.

Adelson, the sixth richest man in the world, can afford to pay for a few million dollars of slick advertising to persuade voters that this (whatever this turns out to be) is the right thing to do. He’s certainly done it before.

He attempted to knock off three Democratic county commissioners in 1998 with a $2 million ad campaign and another (Yvonne Atkinson Gates) with a recall. Those efforts failed and Erin Kenny, Dario Herrera and Myrna Williams were all re-elected. Kenny and Herrera are now convicted crooks. Atkinson Gates is under investigation.

Then again, Adelson also has to take some blame for helping elect Republican County Commissioner-turned-crook Lance Malone in 1996.

Clearly, that was a mistake in judgment.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.