Arena still faces a long road

It’s been a long road to the ballot for Caesars Entertainment and the Arena Initiative Committee that’s looking to build a sports arena on land behind the Imperial Palace.

But the casino company won another round in court Monday, and if its legal luck holds, it may soon be arguing before voters and not judges.

Caesars officials lost out in June when they tried to persuade the Clark County Commission to put an advisory question on the ballot to impose a 0.9 percent sales tax along the Strip to finance a new 20,000-seat arena. So the company took its idea to the voters, circulating a petition that garnered more than 200,000 signatures in just a couple months.

That sent the petition to the Nevada Legislature, which decided not to approve it. In fact, lawmakers are considering a counter-measure that would ban special sales tax districts within any particular county.

But even before the Legislature rejected the idea, a group called Taxpayers for the Protection of Nevada Jobs sued to block it. (The group is affiliated with casino companies opposed to a taxpayer-subsidized arena, including MGM Resorts International — owner of two major event centers on the Strip.)

The job-protecting taxpayers first sued on grounds the initiative violated the rule that limits an initiative to only one subject, and that the description on the petitions was misleading. Carson City District Court Judge James Russell disagreed in October, and that case is on appeal to the state Supreme Court.

A second legal action alleged that not enough valid signatures were gathered, there were errors made in gathering them and that signature-gatherers had lied to voters about the arena concept. (To be sure, one of them told me outside a Vons grocery store the arena was to be built "downtown," and when I corrected her to say it would be near the Strip, she replied, "Strip, downtown, it’s all the same.")

But this week, Russell ruled that even if defective petitions were thrown out, there were still enough valid signatures to support the initiative. And, he wrote, no matter what a signature-gatherer says (they are paid for their efforts, by the way) it’s up to voters to pay attention.

"The safeguard against this (misleading remarks) is that voters need to educate themselves before signing an initiative by reading the descriptive effect provided on the initiative and be careful what they are signing," he wrote.

Amen, your honor.

Even if the Supreme Court upholds Russell’s rulings — and it seems to have plenty of reason to do so — the fight continues. Caesars and its arena committee still have to sell Clark County voters on the idea of raising an already-high 8.1 percent sales tax to a full 9 percent along the Strip, while at the same time persuading them to reject the Legislature’s no-special-tax-district measure (assuming lawmakers approve it; it passed the Senate unanimously and awaits action in the Assembly).

And the group will have to contend with rival projects, including arenas envisioned at UNLV and one planned for land near Mandalay Bay. If either of those projects can get financing in place (a serious unanswered question at this point) and break ground, voters may just consider the Caesars arena idea moot.

Those rival projects will reportedly rely on tax-increment financing or tax rebates, which divert money that would normally go to local governments and schools. Caesars can argue its arena plan won’t take money from local governments or schools.

Caesars has survived more than a few setbacks thus far on the road to the ballot. But there’s still a long way to go to November, 2012.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius, or reach him at 387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.