The politically potent Culinary union Local 226 says its already gathered enough signatures to require a popular vote on the City Council\u2019s current scheme to move Las Vegas City Hall to an abandoned casino site six blocks to the southwest of its current location — which would place it between the Clark County Temple to Government and the traffic fine collection\/strip-search operation known as the \u201cRegional Justice Center.\u201d<\/p>\n
The union actually threatens to place two measures on the ballot, possibly as soon as June. One would require voter approval for lease-purchase construction projects (that\u2019s how the new City Hall scheme would be structured), while the other would actually repeal the city\u2019s current redevelopment plan — otherwise scheduled to sunset in 2031 — giving voters the power to approve or reject individual redevelopment projects.
\nLas Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman responded Thursday that the city will fight both ballot initiatives. The mayor further said existing projects would continue no matter what voters say.<\/p>\n
For the record, if these initiatives reflected the union\u2019s true goals, they would have enough merit to justify serious and thorough discussion.<\/p>\n
For decades, downtown \u201credevelopment\u201d has been an excuse to make heavy-handed use of the city\u2019s powers of eminent domain, and to plow tax money into schemes designed to benefit existing downtown casino owners and favored downtown law firms, while driving away or shutting out property owners not so favored.<\/p>\n
That would be bad enough if it had worked. But downtown gaming tax revenues continue to fall, while dust devils swirl scrap paper through the echoing redevelopment showplace known as \u201cNeonopolis\u201d till it starts to look like a set for \u201cOn the Beach\u201d — even as the ongoing redevelopment apparatus continues to divert tax revenues that might be better used in the general fund.<\/p>\n
Meantime, the scheme to move City Hall arises not because the \u201cold\u201d city hall is decrepit or inadequate, but as part of a real estate deal that resembles a college football parlay card, in which everything has to fall into place — including hypothetical future bidders willing to pay big bucks for the current City Hall site, in the midst of a recession — for the city to collect any \u201cpayoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is that it\u2019s unlikely these initiatives really reveal the Culinary\u2019s goals. Rather, this has all the earmarks of an old-fashioned shakedown.<\/p>\n
Remember the scene in \u2018The Godfather\u201d in which attorney Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) tells movie producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) that he\u2019s about to have some labor problems at his studio, and that one of his young leading men is about to graduate from marijuana to heroin? Hagen\u2019s employer, Don Corleone, can make those problems go away, the young attorney offers — if Mr. Woltz will return the favor by casting Don Corleone\u2019s godson, Johnny Fontaine, in an upcoming movie.<\/p>\n
Long-time Las Vegas political reporter Jon Ralston reports that a few weeks back Culinary chief D. Taylor met with Mayor Goodman for coffee, and they \u201cdid more than chat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor gave Goodman a document, Mr. Ralston reports, that detailed requested \u201creforms\u201d of the redevelopment agency. \u201cGoodman and others took this as a quid pro quo: Do these things and we will not try to kill City Hall and the redevelopment plan,\u201d Mr. Ralston contends.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unlikely Mr. Taylor would have been that direct — just as the fictional Tom Hagen was careful to offer the movie mogul only \u201cfavors,\u201d never threats.<\/p>\n
But the list of demands is available Online, and it\u2019s a veritable union wet dream.<\/p>\n
While NRS 279.500 already requires that ginned-up \u201cprevailing wages\u201d be paid on Redevelopment construction sites, \u201cthere are no parallel provisions for permanent jobs created through redevelopment projects,\u201d the union complains in the document handed to Mayor Goodman.<\/p>\n
So — if the city would like to see these ballot initiatives disappear, presumably — the Culinary would prefer that the city institute a provision under which developers in the redevelopment area would have to pay a \u201cliving wage\u201d (defined as \u201c100 percent of the statewide hourly wage\u201d) and \u201cprovide a health insurance plan for all employees that includes an option for health insurance coverage for dependents of the employees.\u201d Furthermore, the union stipulates, these provisions should apply not only to developers, but also to future \u201ctenants in the project.\u201d<\/p>\n
The union also wants a guarantee that 15 percent of any housing units built in the Redevelopment area will be \u201cdevoted … to low- and moderate-income families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, the unions demand that the city \u201cadopt a labor peace ordinance,\u201d in which anyone developing a large hotel, entertainment or retail project (\u201cincluding grocery stores\u201d) would have to first negotiate and sign \u201ca labor peace agreement with a union.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gee. Wonder how one goes about getting one of those?<\/p>\n
Needless to say, demands to \u201cset aside housing units for low- and moderate-income families\u201d rarely mean building less expensive rooming houses with a common bathroom down the hall, or anything like that. No, the implication is that 15 percent of the units must have rents set so low as to make them unprofitable, with some government welfare office deciding who\u2019s \u201cdiverse\u201d enough to get the discount, while the difference is subsidized either by taxpayers or by higher rents charged those \u201cwho can afford it\u201d … or both.<\/p>\n
Meantime, requiring any future business occupant of the downtown to pay everyone a living wage — defined as the state\u2019s \u201caverage hourly wage\u201d — may sound nice, but a moment\u2019s thought reveals the absurdity.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019ll determine where this moving target stands in any given month? Shall we average in illegal-alien lawn cutters being paid less than minimum wage \u201cunder the table\u201d; panhandlers making an unreported $40 an hour standing at highway exits, and doctors making $1 million each?<\/p>\n
To render this silliness easier to understand, consider the microcosm of a small doctors\u2019 office shared by three doctors making $200,000 apiece, two nurses making $45,000 apiece, and a receptionist making $30,000. If they were required to pay their next hire their \u201caverage wage,\u201d and their next hire was a janitor, he or she would receive $120,000 per year.<\/p>\n
Shall a skilled elevator installer be paid the same \u201caverage statewide hourly\u201d wage as an apprentice hod carrier working on the same job site? No? Wages will instead be averaged \u201cby category,\u201d based on highly imaginative paperwork submitted by the unions? (That\u2019s the way current \u201cprevailing wages\u201d are set, after all.) On, what fun! And who gets to define the \u201ccategories\u201d?<\/p>\n
Even before the current economic downturn, it was hard to get major investors to pour money into projects in downtown urban cores. Downtown Las Vegas doesn\u2019t have nearly as severe a problem as areas in downtown Detroit, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C. But the mayor hasn\u2019t even been able to attract a supermarket to replace the lone downtown grocery driven out so the Redevelopment geniuses could use the site for Neonopolis. Does anyone believe piling on expensive ADDITIONAL requirements — requiring some convenience store to pay its cashiers the \u201caverage statewide hourly wage,\u201d in perpetuity — is going to HELP?<\/p>\n
Mayor Goodman is right to call the Culinary\u2019s bluff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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