Mayors weigh ethics of Las Vegas freebies

Published Monday, June 5, 2006

LAS VEGAS (AP) - It’s convention time. Do you know where your mayor is?

If you live in a major American city, the answer is probably Las Vegas, this year’s host of the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting.

More than 200 mayors converged on the city Friday for four days of policy discussion and corporate-funded partying, raising ethical questions and prompting some mayors to hold a separate conference without the corporate handouts.

Las Vegas, led by mob-lawyer-turned-mayor Oscar Goodman, is spending $1.8 million just entertaining the public officials, $1.3 million of that comes from corporate donations.

Aside from discussions on pandemic flu and homeland security, the agenda included a morning round of golf, a private tour of a dolphin habitat, poker lessons from a professional and a tour of The Bellagio art museum. That was all complimentary and all before dinner Saturday.

Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman is attending the conference but could not be reached for comment today.

Saturday night was "Oscar’s Night," a blowout ball with performances from top Las Vegas talent. Yesterday was a free, private performance of Cirque du Soleil’s latest, a Beatles-themed show called "Love." Today is pool-side luau at the city’s hottest new casino, Red Rock Station, with a surprise guest. All bars are open - sushi and otherwise.

"I want everyone going home and saying Las Vegas is the greatest place in the world and saying Oscar Goodman is the coolest mayor who ever lived," Goodman said.

Sure, it’s cool. But is it ethical?

Although corporate-funded conventions for public officials are nothing new, they can be problematic, said ethics expert Bob Stern of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.

"If I wanted a private showing of Cirque du Soleil and said, ‘I’m having a family reunion,’ I don’t think they’d say, ‘Sure!"’ Stern said. "The problem is these" sponsors "want something from Las Vegas, and they want something from the other public officials if they’re going to expand to other parts of the country. It’s a trend that should stop."

Stern said the freebies should be considered gifts. Some mayors, depending on their city’s ethics rules, might have to report them.

U.S. Conference of Mayors President Beverly O’Neill, mayor of Long Beach, Calif., said she’s comfortable with the corporate presence at the meeting, which ends tomorrow. While the group covers the cost of the meeting itself, she said she left the details of after-hours activities to Goodman and city of Las Vegas.

The city contracted the job of raising entertainment funds out to a prominent local public relations firm, R&R Live, which was paid $100,000 for its work soliciting at least $380,000 from casinos, $137,500 from Sprint-Nextel, $88,000 from the construction industry and $3,000 from Chippendales, among others.

Las Vegas taxpayers will pay about $500,000 for entertaining, city officials said.

Goodman, who pushed for several years to bring the conference to Las Vegas to help establish the city’s "sophistication," adamantly defends the city’s party-planning and corporate fundraising. People who think otherwise are "haters," "misanthropes" and "complainers."

"So what? The mayors don’t even know who the corporations are. It’s irrelevant, as long as it’s paid for," he said, noting that he was not personally involved in raising the money.

The mayors do know some of sponsors and not just because logos were printed in the programs distributed to every delegate.

Burnsville, Minn., Mayor Elizabeth Kautz said she uses the conference, in part, to hear from "corporate citizens" and to learn about new products and technologies available to her city.

Several mayors noted they’d rather have companies foot the bill than taxpayers.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has to be "uniquely sensitive" to the level of corporate involvement because his constituents are.

"You have to be aware that if they’re going to sponsor something, they expect a return on the investment," he said. Newsom said he would leave the conference early.

Corporate comps weren’t well received in Madison, Wis., either, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said.

"We have a pretty strict ethics code in Madison, and that kind of thing was a problem for me," he said, explaining why in 2004 he started The New Cities Project, a group of mayors that aim to have meetings that are "a little more policy focused."

The New Cities Project also met Friday in Las Vegas at the Luxor hotel-casino. About 36 cities were represented, though not all by mayors. The total cost for entertainment and education was about $25,000.

"But we don’t have Cirque du Soleil," Cieslewicz said.