A follow-up to our invitation to Bill Weidner of the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas and Rossi Ralenkotter of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) to discuss the LVCVA’s $200 million per year (and growing) subsidy from the hotel room tax and whether or not that money would be better spent on road construction and such rather than advertising to folks who already know that Vegas is a destination resort.
You’ll recall that Mr. Weidner accepted our invitation immediately, while Mr. Ralenkotter’s office said the LVCVA chief was out of town and would consider the request upon his return. Well, he’s back…and as the kids would say, he “chickened out.”
“I respectfully decline your invitation,” the convention center chief wrote. Rather than discuss the relative merits of the continuing taxpayer subsidy of LVCVA in a public forum, Ralenkotter said any such discussion should only be held at the Nevada Legislature where, I imagine, LVCVA’s highly-paid lobbyists can better control the discussion and debate.
Remember this the next time someone tells you that the ONLY way to fund highway construction in Nevada is to raise taxes. It’s not that there aren’t alternatives, only that nobody seems to want to talk about the alternatives. At least in public.
Posted on March 15th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
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