GUEST

Chuck Muth, President, Citizen Outreach

The much-anticipated Wet 'n' Wild water park opens this weekend with attractions including the Hoover Half Pipe and the Rattler, designed to entice the most jaded daredevil.

GUEST

Mike Prevat, CityLife Reporter

GUEST

Rep. Steven Horsford, Democrat, Congressional District Four

GUESTS

Howard Cummings, Production Desinger, Behind the Candelabra

Ellen Mirjnick, Costume Designer, Behind the Candelabra

 Production photos courtesey HBO.

GUEST

Sen. Mo Denis, Democrat, District 2

Michel Marizco, Reporter, Fronteras: The Changing America Desk

BY MICHEL MARIZCO — The former federal prosecutor for Arizona who resigned after a gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious may now face ethical violations.

The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Justice said former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke leaked a memo to Fox News in 2011. The OIG said it believes Burke was trying to discredit a key whistleblower to the gunwalking operation.

The memo in question was one written by John Dodson, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent. In the memo, Dodson had recommended letting guns walk so they would be used in crimes, opening up the possibility of charging the gun buyers with federal crimes.

That practice was the same one being employed by agents in Fast and Furious. Dodson was a critic of that operation and later said he only wrote the memo to highlight what he saw as the erroneous thinking behind Fast and Furious. Burke was already under investigation when he leaked the memo.

He had told OIG investigators that he had earlier leaked information to The New York Times. Burke resigned as Arizona’s U.S. Attorney in August 2011. The OIG is pushing for the former prosecutor to be investigated by ethics boards in the states where he is licensed to practice law.

GUESTS

Alan Berube, co-author "Confronting Suburban Poverty in America," Brookings Institution

Terry Lindemann, Executive Director, Family Promise Las Vegas

Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada Attorney General

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has a plan that punishes the perpetrators of sex trafficking – the pimps – instead of the victims they recruit.

Assembly Bill 67 addresses what Masto calls “a horrific trade, which is really slave labor” that mostly targets young women in their teens. According to Masto, the youngest victim in southern Nevada is 13-years-old.  

“They treat these kids like cattle,” says Masto. “They move them around from one event to the next.”  

She says her bill would allow the state to go after restitutions, which would provide compensation to the victims, and also channel money into the services the state can provide.  

“Right now we keep (the victims) in jail. We can get services to them in jail and keep them away from their pimps,” says Masto.

Long-term psychological counseling is important when treating victims of sex trafficking, since pimps “look for someone with low self-esteem,” says Masto. Once the recruit is working as a prostitute, her physical and psychological health deteriorates further. “Now they feel they brought this on themselves and they’re ashamed,” says Masto. “They will self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, and now they are in this world that is very violent.”

Masto says pimps even brand their workers with tattoos, so that if they try to run away other pimps can identify and return them.

It takes “a long time and a lot of professional help,” to heal the damage caused by the sex trafficking industry, says Masto. “Unfortunately we don’t have that yet.”

Jacob Hafter, attorney

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- The decision this week to officially install interim superintendent Pat Skorkowsky caught some by surprise, and not in a good way. In fact, some observers suggest the board’s stealth Tuesday night pick may have violated Nevada open meeting laws.

Attorney Jacob Hafter is one such critic – he says the Clark County School Board needs to look more closely at their procedures, and whether they’re giving the public fair access.

“There are pros and cons to elevating an internal candidate as opposed to engaging in a national search,” says Hafter. “Those pros and cons were being debated for several months and I don’t think a decision was ever made. And I don’t think that people had a chance to fully vet the current candidate who was promoted.”

School board president Carolyn Edwards acknowledged that most of the public didn’t know that the superintended selection was taking place Tuesday night.  But she also said, “If you really wanted to know what we were doing, you should have been watching.”

Edwards added that two months of town hall meetings provided ample opportunity for public input.

But Hafter says that this isn’t the first time that the board has failed to include the state in its process “and it probably won’t be the last.”

Carolyn Edwards, Clark County School Board President

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Clark County School Board president Carolyn Edwards said there were “compelling reasons” to install interim Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky in the job permanently. The move happened unexpectedly, Tuesday night, without first conducting a national search.

“The reality is when you don’t want to hit the reset button on the system, when what you want to do is pass the baton, you limit your pool of candidates if you do a national search, because most people who come in want to do their own thing,” says Edwards. “I feel very strongly that the work that Dwight Jones did is the right work, and we want to pass the baton. We need someone who knows what those pieces of work are.”

Edwards says that the only drawback in making the pick Tuesday night is that most of the public didn’t know that the selection was taking place.  

On the other hand, says Edwards, “If you really wanted to know what we were doing, you should have been watching.” She points to two months of town hall meetings as providing ample opportunity for the public to offer input.

Edwards says that Skorkowsky, who began his career at the district as a first grade teacher, has a talent for motivating educators.

“He knows how to do that without discouraging or riling people,” says Edwards.

Despite touting Skorkowsky’s soft skills, Edwards knows the measure of his success will show up in the hard numbers.

“We’ll be looking at the data. The board will look at student achievement data, and if it goes backward, that’s a big alarm, and if it moves forward, that’s great.”

Matt Walter, Managing Director of Communications and Political Affairs, Republican State Leadership Committee

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- A conservative group is targeting Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller for failing to release records. The State Government Leadership Foundation is seeking information about Miller’s travel, cell phone and compensation information.

“It seems very clear to us that they are breaking Nevada state law,” says Matt Walter, a spokesperson for the organization.

Miller’s office originally said they would provide the records by April 1^st, but according to the lawsuit they have not met that deadline.

A spokesperson for the State Government Leadership Foundation says that not only is Miller slow to fulfill the group’s request, but  that the cost of providing the records raises a red flag.

“We were given an estimate of the cost which is over $4,100, far in excess of records costs in other departments,” says Walter.

The irony? Miller’s office has been working to promote more transparency in the campaign process. The other irony? The group seeking these records from Miller is a ‘dark money’ 401C4, which means they don’t have to disclose their donors.

“There are very specific laws that govern (401C4s),” says Walter. “Many of them upheld by the Supreme Court under the right to free speech.”

Ross Miller has responded to the lawsuit with a short statement. He said:

Dr. Josette E. Spotts, MD, FACS, Breast Surgeon

Dr. Andres Resto, MD, Plastic Surgeon

Kari Neely, breast cancer patient

BY IAN MYLCHREEST -- Call it the Angelina Jolie effect. Women across the country and beyond are thinking about whether they might be in that relatively small group of women who should consider a prophylactic double mastectomy.

A panel of local cancer specialists and patients discussed the issue recently on KNPR. The marker for Jolie was a defective version of the BRCA 1 gene, said Dr. Josette Spotts, a breast surgeon with Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada. That gives a woman an 80-90 percent chance of getting cancer in either breast. It also creates a very high risk of getting ovarian cancer

Kari Neel, a breast cancer patient found she had the disease but decided in 2008 that the time was not right to undergo a mastectomy. She has been undergoing tests twice a year to make sure that she has not had a recurrence of the disease. Waiting for those results, though, has proved such a harrowing experience that Neel has now decided that she should undergo a double mastectomy.

Despite recent criticisms Myriad, which monopolizes the genetic testing, is willing to help patients with lower co-pays and discounts, said Spotts.

A caller to the program named Linda said that she had a double mastectomy because she was worried by her “long family history” of breast cancer.

“I decided I wanted to do everything possible I could to keep it from having a chance to return,” she said.

Neel too had a family history of breast cancer – four generations on her mother’s side, so she had no hesitation in getting the test. She took herceptin, six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation for a year. The treatments were debilitating but she decided to have a positive attitude throughout.

“I lost my hair but I didn’t lose my life,” she said, laughing.

How do you know if you should undergo testing to determine whether you carry the BRCA gene?

Dr. Josette Spotts, breast surgeon, says her office recommends the following:

"A lot of it has to do with family history, but we do have guidelines that we go by, and we follow the National Cancer Consortium guidelines. It’s based on family cohorts and follow ups of patients and looking at their genetic makeup, but basically if you have any woman less than 45 they get tested for the gene. Any woman who has a family history whatsoever of someone in their family having ovarian cancer, i.e. Angelina Jolie, you get tested to see if you have the gene because it’s a much higher risk that an ovarian cancer patient will carry the gene than a breast cancer patient. Ashkenazi Jewish population, a family history of male breast cancer is very very important."

GUEST

Andres Ramirez, Two Countries One Voice

Rob Stillwell, spokesman, NV Energy

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- NV Energy's plan to move away from coal and invest more in renewable energy has powerful supporters, including U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and Governor Brian Sandoval. But it has some critics as well, and the latest iteration of the plan is much smaller and less ambitious than originally envisioned.

While the objective is still to wean off of coal energy, the plan has been dialed back from 10 to 20 years to a five year plan, according to an NV Energy spokesperson.

The main concern of critics has been whether increases for the rate payer would be overly burdensome.

 “I think we’re all in favor of the accelerated retirement of the coal generation,” says former Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa. “And (the current) version of course is better than the original amendment. We’re just trying to get this tweaked if you will, to include some reference to better energy efficiency and also more competitive procurement, just to make certain that the rate payers are indeed protected.”

According to NV Energy spokesperson Rob Stillwell, rate increases will be minimal - at the end of 20 years, the rates will be 3.84 percent more.

 “But inflation is expected to be two percent a year over the same period of time,” says Stillwell. “So it’s less than inflation.”

Stillwell says that electric companies are mandated by law to keep their profit under 10 percent. “I don’t think we’ve reached that allowable rate of return, not one year.”

“Electricity is one of those things that everyone has to have, so you want to make sure that this is done in a fair manner, that everyone gets represented in the process,” says Del Papa.

Frankie Sue Del Papa, former Attorney General of Nevada

NV Energy's plan to move away from coal and invest more in renewable energy has powerful supporters, including U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and Governor Brian Sandoval. But it has some critics as well.

One of those critics is former Attorney General of Nevada Frankie Sue Del Papa, who says that NV Energy’s 10-year-plan to move away from coal leaves rate payers overcharged. Del Papa is a part of a new group called the Nevada Consumer Protection Alliance that is lobbying to defeat NV Energy’s plan – known as NVision – as it currently stands.

“I think we’re all in favor of the accelerated retirement of the coal generation,” says Del Papa. “And (the current) version of course is better than the original amendment. We’re just trying to get this tweaked if you will, to include some reference to better energy efficiency and also more competitive procurement, just to make certain that the rate payers are indeed protected.”  

Del Papa says the current attorney general’s office has done “a terrific job” in expressing concern over rate increases.

“Electricity is one of those things that everyone has to have, so you want to make sure that this is done in a fair manner, that everyone gets represented in the process,” says Del Papa.

GUESTS

Bob Boehm, Director, Center for Energy Research, UNLV

Jaci Batista, Engineering Professor, UNLV

GUESTS

Sarah Nelson, Associate Director for Research, Division on Addiction at the Cambridge Health Alliance

Carol O'Hare, Executive Director, Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

Scott C., recovering gambling addict

Seth Palansky, Spokesman, Caesars Interactive Entertainment

GUEST

Rep. Joe Heck, Republican, Congressional District 3

GUEST

Max Eberle, professional pool player

Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick, Democrat, North Las Vegas

David Goldwater, lobbyist

BY AMY KINGSLEY -- If you’ve ever bought a ticket to Cirque du Soleil, or purchased admission to a nightclub on the Strip, then you’ve probably paid it. But if you prefer events like NASCAR or the Electric Daisy Carnival, then you probably haven’t.

We’re talking about the Live Entertainment Tax, which applies to some performances and recreation activities, but not others.

Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick is behind an effort to close loopholes in the law to make it apply to everything from rock concerts to golf fees.

“Forty-four other states have similar admissions tax across the state,” Kirkpatrick said.

Right now, the law has too many loopholes that allow venues to avoid paying their fair share, she said.

“One-hundred-and-thirty-five -million dollars of the Live Entertainment Tax comes primarily from the Las Vegas Strip – that’s the bulk of it,” Kirkpatrick said. “As far as some of the things that we see, golf memberships, you know. Folks are paying $700 a month for their membership dues. In other states, that is part of the admissions tax. At least at my house, $700 would have to be extra in order to have that livelihood or that hobby.”

Critics have derided the bill as the “Family Fun Tax.” The promoter behind Electric Daisy Carnival has threatened to leave the state. The Electric Daisy Carnival brought an estimated $207 million to Southern Nevada, according to a report commissioned by its parent company.

Kirkpatrick said she is open to all input on the bill. But she said that Electric Daisy Carnival enjoys several economic benefits from its location in Southern Nevada.

“Here in Nevada, they are able to get three times the amount of a ticket as they do in other parts of the state,” Kirkpatrick said. “They are able to have a three-day minimum requirement. In other parts of the nation, they pay higher rates than they do here.”

Everyone needs to pay a little bit to help the state make ends meet.

“We need venues to be part of our community so we can pay for the vital services,” Kirkpatrick said.

David Goldwater is a lobbyist who testified against the bill. The current entertainment tax is flawed, he said, but includes vital exemptions for big events that benefit Nevada’s economy.

“You get to tell working families that go to NASCAR races that they don’t have to pay,” Goldwater said. “And young adults that attend the Electric Daisy Carnival, they don’t have to pay this extra tax. And lastly, I feel, and this hasn’t been proved, it’s a hope, that it drives other taxes. So, for every dollar you don’t pay in admissions tax, at 8 percent currently, you’re going to pick up in sales tax at 8.1 percent. It’s fuel tax, room tax, gaming tax.”

The legislature should not eliminate all exemptions, but keep the ones that promote economic activity, Goldwater said.

“Sometimes the legislative policy is we want certain behavior to occur,” Goldwater said. “We don’t want working families to pay this tax. We don’t want people who enjoy outdoor concerts to pay this tax.”

GUEST

Karoun Demirjian, Washington Correspondent, Las Vegas Sun

GUEST

Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies

But they had few clues to offer when they turned the job of searching for Goldberg’s body over to a volunteer search and rescue team.

“We had no clues,” said David Cummings, commander of Red Rock Search and Rescue. “All we had was a couple cell tower pings east of Sunrise Mountain and that was it. Needle in a haystack. So we had some evidence of a certain type of dust on [the suspect’s] vehicle. You know, Metro homicide was very forthright with us and gave us all the evidence they had. And we just basically looked at the desert and said, ‘We’re going to tear it apart.’”

The team searched for more than a year. They went out on more than 50 missions and combed the area east of Sunrise Mountain. Eventually, they zeroed in on a section of water near Lake Mead. But it was inside the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Regulations required the group to obtain a million dollar insurance policy in order to search.

Eventually, they found an affordable policy, and about a year after they first started searching, they recovered Goldberg’s remains.

Deputy Commander Dana Richardson was on one of the five teams out searching that day, and he heard the news over his radio.

“We all heard the calls kinda going over the radio that they suspected they had found a human femur,” Richardson said. “And then, more remains were located. I think there was a little bit of disbelief, a little bit of, ‘Could this be?’”

But closure would not come that quickly. The team turned the remains over to the coroner, who submitted them for DNA analysis.

“As we went home that night and kind of talked on the phone and the team chatter kind of went over the radio and in our private internet pages, there was a real sense of excitement that we had found something,” Richardson said.  “We didn’t know who it was. It was always kind of the wonder, like ‘Could it be Keith?’ We didn’t know. We had to wait for DNA. We had to wait for the results and that took about two or three weeks. When we got the results, Dave let out just an unreal cheer.”

When members of the Goldberg family called to say the bones belonged to Keith, the team was elated.

“The relief was incredible,” Cummings said.

The discovery validated team members, who joined the group for one reason.

“You do this because we are trying to send someone home with their family,” Cummings said.

And that’s exactly what they did.

GUESTS
David Cummings, commander, Red Rock Search and Rescue
Dana Richardson, deputy commander, Red Rock Search and Rescue
Robin Peterson, volunteer, Red Rock Search and Rescue

Bill Marler, attorney, Marler Clark Attorneys at Law 

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Firefly patrons who ate food contaminated with salmonella had to pay for their meals twice – once when the bill arrived and of course later, when they became seriously ill.

So what’s that worth in damages?

“What people are entitled to is their medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering for what they had to go through,” says Seattle-based attorney Bill Marler, who is representing some of those diners.

“I’ve settled or tried almost 10,000 salmonella cases so I have a pretty good idea what the market is for those cases,” says Marler. “Most of them are in the $10-20,000 range. They go up based on the severity of the illness.”

Marler says there’s a slim chance that court findings will reveal that the outbreak was the responsibility of a distributor, and not the popular tapas restaurant.

“We know that this outbreak happened at Firefly,” says Marler. “If there any other illnesses of this particular genetic chain that occurred anywhere else in Nevada in the same time frame that we can say ‘this place got the same chicken as Firefly, this place got the same lettuce as Firefly.’ Then it becomes a different thing.”

Even though Firefly’s reputation has obviously taken a serious hit as a result of the outbreak, Marler has seen other restaurants bounce back.

“You know, Jack In The Box survived. It was tough, but they survived. Other restaurants who’ve had similar outbreaks reached out and did the right thing for their patrons, cleaned up their act, became activists in food safety,” says Marler. “It’s not a death knell. It doesn’t have to be a death knell.”

GUESTS

Sarah Fuhrman, dancer

Mary LaCroix, dancer

Pedro Martinez, Superintendent, Washoe County School District

BY AMY KINGSLEY -- Pedro Martinez, Superintendent of Washoe County, has a problem with the proficiency tests: They don’t measure whether students are ready for career or college.

Many students who pass the tests end up requiring remediation in college.

Many of the students who flunk the test do just fine in their classes. But they may encounter material on the test that they haven’t learned in class, because administrators and teachers have no idea what will be on it.

Martinez wants the state to scrap proficiency tests and replace them with final exams in 9^th and 10^th grade that students must pass to graduate, along with a college entrance exam in 11^th grade to measure college readiness.

Students who flunk those finals in 9^th and 10^th grade will have to repeat the class and the exam until they pass, so they have a stronger incentive to pass the first time. Those final exams will cover material that has been taught in class.

“We’ll know the children are going to take the exam seriously if they have to pass it to pass the class,” Martinez says.

“The way it works with the current system, our children take the assessment in 10^th grade. They fail them. They go to 11^th grade. They fail them. They go to 12^th grade,” Martinez says. “And so what’s happening right now is that our districts are becoming very good at making sure these kids pass these tests by 12^th grade.”

Schools will use the ACT or SAT to measure how ready students are for college. But those tests won’t count toward graduation.

“Because they are not tied to graduation, it’s an honest look at where the students are at,” Martinez says.

The tests are not designed as a high school exit exam, Martinez says, but they can be a useful tool to show where students need to improve.

“But the problem is that I know that our children are graduating from school, and they may not be prepared for college. And I’d rather have the ACT or SAT in 11^th grade that gives me that information and we can use it in 12^th grade and give them what they need before they leave our high schools.”

Several states require high school students to take the ACT, regardless of whether they plan to attend college. They include Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wyoming.

GUEST

Assemblyman David Bobzien, Democrat, Washoe County

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- After watching countless episodes of L.A. Law, we may think we know all we need to about our Miranda Rights. A couple of recent high-profile stories – a Nevada Supreme Court decision and the failure of authorities to read the rights to Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – have brought the Miranda Rights back into the news, and raised some questions.

Two Las Vegas lawyers shared some facts you may not know about your right to remain silent.

Rights Only Apply When In Custody

Before a suspect is arrested, the Miranda Rights don’t apply.

“If they’re not in custody, then (police are) free to ask anything they want,” says attorney Robert Langford. “But then the minute they’re in custody, they have to be Mirandized.”

Police Are Allowed To Lie To You

“What Miranda doesn’t do, is it doesn’t stop police from using tactics to get people to give information. It doesn’t stop the police from using trickery, it doesn’t stop police from lying, which the Constitution allows them to do,” says Figler. “It’s a tactic the Supreme Court has endorsed.”

Police Can’t Cut A Deal

One of the lies a police officer might tell a suspect is that if they give information, they will get a lighter sentence.

“Only the district attorney has that authority,” says Figler.

Being Drunk Is (Probably) No Excuse

Anything you say to the police in an interrogation is fair game, even if you’re intoxicated.

“Unless the person was held at gun point and they had liquor poured down their throat – if he voluntarily got intoxicated, all words that come out of his mouth are voluntary words,” says Langford.

Figler disagrees. “It’s worth challenging,” he says, since any waiver of a substantial right has to be “knowing and intelligent.”

BY IAN MYLCHREEST -- Fixing the foreclosure crisis is a work in progress. Still.

The Nevada Legislature is considering SB321 – the Homeowners’ Bill of Rights. That law would force lenders to provide one point of contact, and get rid of the paper and phone chase, that has typically dogged efforts to get any loan modification approved.

It would also ban so-called “dual-tracking,” says State Senator Justin Jones (D-Las Vegas) in a recent interview. That’s the practice of banks proceeding with foreclosure at the same time as they are supposed to working on a loan modification with the homeowner. That has led to much frustration among homeowners who believed that any foreclosure would be halted.

Many people would have been able to keep their homes, says Jones. They did not know what their options were and had simply become frustrated once they were deeply underwater.

Even though home prices and sales were picking up in the valley, Jones insists that there was still a long way to go and that this measure was necessary. “A lot of people are still facing loss of jobs,” he notes. “They’re facing payments they can’t afford and facing adjustable rate mortgages that are coming up for adjustment here soon and I think we really need to help those people.”

Jones says that not all homes can be saved, but that the bill of rights would give homeowners a fair opportunity to decide whether they should try. At the committee hearings last week, bankers’ representatives were more doubtful, saying that many people still faced big hurdles such as unemployment and that these procedural safeguards would not help those people.

Jones dealt with the problem firsthand. His grandparents were overwhelmed when they had got behind in their mortgage and as an attorney he tried to help, he said. Even a lawyer, he said, had been “given the runaround.”

GUEST

Jon Ralston, host, Ralston Reports

Marlene Reid, artist and small business owner

Bob Beers, City Councilman, Ward 2

BY AMY KINGSLEY -- The recession has forced the city council to make hard choices. And now Councilman Bob Beers wants his colleagues to choose whether public funds should be spent on art or other essential services.

Beers wants to change the Percent for the Arts fund, which allocates 1 percent of the capital improvement budget for public art projects, into a voluntary program. That would allow the city to spend that money, which adds up to an average of $150,000 a year, on other things. He said most taxpayers don’t approve of spending public funds on art.

“You take a fundamentally unpopular thing and set it on auto-pilot, putting essentially the city in the position of having to lay people off while buying art, and there being no vote of the governance structure to approve that,” Beers said. “To me, that’s immoral.”

But in a recent public hearing, not one person spoke in support of the proposed change. Instead, artists and small business owners extolled the benefits of public art. Councilman Beers dismissed the speakers as a “thin special interest.”

Marlene Reid owns a boutique in the Arts District, Vexed by Design, and she supports the city’s art program. Unlike Beers, she hears wide support for public arts, and not just from her neighbors in the Arts District.

“We don’t live in a bubble down in the Arts District,” Reid said. “We interact with people all over the valley. The consensus that I get, is that this is something that makes these difficult times easier to live in. It’s something that lifts the soul. It encourages you. It gives you hope that things will get better.”

But Beers said the arts will continue to thrive, with or without the city’s support.

“Art exists without government,” he said.

James Ohrenschall, Nevada Assemblyman

Kory Nelson, Denver City Attorney

Jesica Clemens, In Cred A Bull

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Even the most devoted pit bull fan can’t ignore the stories of maulings – last February, a six-year-old Las Vegas boy almost lost his leg in a pit bull attack.

Is the breed genetically wired for violence? Or do news reports generate a lot of publicity for a few bad seeds?

A Nevada Assemblyman thinks the good dogs shouldn’t be punished with the bad. AB 110 would make “breed-specific” bans – laws that would regulate ownership of certain dogs with a reputation for showing aggression, specifically pit bulls – illegal in Nevada.

“It’s based on the premise that if you see a problem dog, you need to look at the other end of the leash,” says Assemblyman James Ohrenschall.

Not only does Ohrenschall think that vicious dogs are the result of nurture, not nature, he thinks breed-specific laws have proven ineffective in stopping attacks. “People go underground, they still keep those dogs,” says Ohrenschall. “Or they switch to a dog that’s not banned and they try to make that a fighting dog.”

Kory Nelson disagrees. That’s “just wrong” says Nelson a Denver city attorney. Denver has had a pit bull ban in place since 1989.

“Denver hasn’t had any fatal attacks since the ban has been enforced, hasn’t had any serious maulings since the ban has been enforced,” says Nelson.

Nelson says that the issue with pit bulls isn’t that they are necessarily more likely to attack, but that when they do attack they’re more likely to cause serious bodily injury or even death.

“They were bred for one purpose and one purpose only,” says Nelson. “To attack larger animals, shake and tear and rip their victims until they bleed to death.”

But pit bull activist Jesica Clemens says studies have shown that pit bulls are no more aggressive than any other breed. She cites a study by German animal behaviorist Esther Schalke, who tested 70 golden retrievers along with 415 dogs with a reputation for showing aggression, including pit bulls, Rottweilers and Dobermans.

“What she found was there is no difference in the way dogs of different breeds respond with aggression – they signal the same, and there is no propensity for aggression based on certain breeds,” says Clemens.

Clemens says banning breed-specific legislation won’t necessarily change the perception of pit bulls.

“As an owner of a pit bull dog I am regularly discriminated against,” says Clemens. “I’m not asking for protection from that, but I am asking for protection from breed-specific legislation.”

GUEST

Rudolph Herzog, author or "A Short History of Nuclear Folly"

Carrison, Chief of Staff at University Medical Center, declared an internal disaster last week after its emergency center became overwhelmed with psychiatric patients. The hospital stopped accepting ambulances for 12 hours.

Almost half the beds in the adult emergency department were taken by psychiatric patients who were waiting to be transferred to Rawson-Neal. Carrison said recent changes in policy have slowed the intake process, and left emergency departments holding the bag.

“With the mentally ill patients … those people stay two, three days, sometimes five or six days in the emergency department or in the hospital,” Carrison said. “So an emergency department that’s not operating really efficiently can turn a bed over every six hours. An emergency department that’s operating efficiently can turn a bed over every four hours. So you can see for every patient that’s there for 24 hours, even if you’re slow, then you’ve not been able to see four other patients medically.”

Psychiatric patients have been crowding emergency departments for years. In 2004, the county manager declared an emergency, and things improved when the state expanded mental health facilities. But they have since cut the mental health budget by millions of dollars, and the number of patients stuck in emergency departments has skyrocketed.

The problem can’t be solved without a serious investment in resources for the mentally ill, Carrison said.

“Let’s say Rawson-Neal takes 35 patients a day, and there’s 105 holding,” Carrison said. “So, if they take 35 every day – what’s left? They still have 70 patients left. So it’s a situation where you can’t catch up. It’s like a funnel, and the large end of the funnel is the emergency departments and the small end of the funnel is the mental health facilities.”

The problem is compounded by the lack of follow-up care, Carrison said.

“It’s a revolving door,” Carrison said. “Many of our patients come and go, come and go, come and go.”

And right now, more patients are coming than going. The state has placed a psychologist at UMC to alleviate the problem. Carrison said it will take some time to see if that works.

GUEST

Dr. Dale Carrison, Chief of Staff, University Medical Center

GUESTS

Shondra Armstrong, F Street Coalition

Trish Geran, F Street Coalition

Nancy Williams, epidemiologist, Southern Nevada Health District

Al Mancini, food writer and critic, Las Vegas CityLife

BY LEE HERNANDEZ -- Most people don’t think twice about enjoying dinner at their favorite restaurants, week in and week out. But if close to 100 people got sick from eating there, would that change?

That’s the question facing Firefly Tapas Kitchen and Bar, which was shut down last week after scores of diners got sick.

The Southern Nevada Health District determined Salmonella was the cause of the outbreak. A total of 86 people have reported the illness to SNHD, an unusually high number, says Nancy Williams, epidemiologist for the district.

Discovering the cause of the outbreak was relatively easy. However, rebuilding public trust is trickier, and whether or not people will forgive Firefly is an open question.

“Something like this has never happened to the best of my knowledge,” says Al Mancini, food writer and critic for Las Vegas CityLife. “Restaurants can be closed and be reopened in 24 hours and people tend to say ‘well, that happens’ and they’re very quick to forgive that. When 80 to 90 people are getting sick, I don’t know how quick we are to forgive that and I think that’s what we’re looking to see.”

Mancini reported a rash of restaurant closings last year after tougher food inspection regulations were put into place. Many chefs believe the regulations are too tough. “Chefs say (the new regulations) are burdensome,” Mancini says. “There is a lot of record keeping, a lot of keeping track of temperatures. Chefs, on a busy day, will say ‘we have been doing it one way for 15-20 years, we’re not going to change.’ And because of that, a lot of really good restaurants ended up being closed.”

High-end strip restaurants Scarpetta at Cosmopolitan and Julian Serrano at Aria were closed within 24 hours of each other in 2012. Both restaurants reopened the next day.

What is salmonella and how do you prevent it?

Salmonella is a bacterium that causes gastrointestinal illness like vomiting and diarrhea; there a number of ways it can spread at home and in restaurants.

“There are really two thoughts on how it gets into foods,” says Williams. “One would be that it came in with a raw food product, and the key there is proper sanitation within the restaurant to prevent it from spreading and getting cross-contaminated on cutting boards or something that is used for multiple foods. And then to keep raw foods away from cooked foods.”

Williams also says it is possible to spread salmonella through foods if a food handler sick with salmonella has not washed his or her hands properly.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no vaccine to prevent salmonellosis. Because foods of animal origin may be contaminated with salmonella, people should not eat raw or undercooked eggs, poultry, or meat.

The CDC also offers tips for preventing salmonella.

The SNHD is still investigating the Firefly case, and a final report will eventually be issued. That report might be a key factor in whether or not patrons will be comfortable going back to Firefly.

“I didn’t have anything to eat there yet (since the outbreak), and I’m not saying I wouldn’t,” Mancini says. “I’m not passing judgment there. I am honestly, like I think a lot of people should be doing, waiting for the full report from the SNHD to see the degree to which Firefly was to blame.”

GUEST

Gilbert Hernandez, comic book artist and author, Love and Rockets and Marble Season

Steve Sebelius, Columnist, Las Vegas Review Journal

BY LEE HERNANDEZ -- The state Economic Forum, a non-partisan group of finance experts that makes projections for state revenue, met and made its final revenue estimates for the next biennium.

The forum projected lawmakers will have an additional $36 million in revenue to factor into the state budget. Total general fund revenue projections for the 2013-2015 biennium total $5.8 billion.

That small boost in revenue won’t do much though. “What they did yesterday is just chump change, they’ll probably give some of that away just in one shot funding to worthy causes at the end of the session, so it doesn’t really help,” says Steve Sebelius, Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist,  in an interview on KNPR’s “State of Nevada.”

They went through every revenue source, they (The Economic Forum) looked in every couch corner, turned out every pants pocket, from insurance taxes, gaming taxes, and left no stone unturned looking for projected revenue Sebelius adds.

Budget and tax plans

Gov. Sandoval released a $6.5 billion budget earlier this year and some senate Republicans have their own budget plan that includes new taxes on mining.

But Democrats, who hold a majority in both the Senate and Assembly, have yet to release a tax plan despite calling for $300 million more in spending for education than Gov. Sandoval has proposed.

Getting an additional $300 million at this point will be tricky.

“They’ll tinker with some exceptions to the Live Entertainment Tax, they may find a little bit of money here or there but there won’t be any major sweeping reforms. Not on day 88 of a 120 day session,” Sebelius says.  “I think we’re going to have to see if the teachers union business tax helps but that’s the next biennium, right here right now, $300 million dollars, that’s probably too steep a hill to climb.”

One forum member told the Review-Journal that current projections are uncertain because factors like the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and federal sequestration could complicate revenue collection. 

While there have been some incremental improvements in the Nevada economy, the state still has a long way to go and seeing into the future is tough.

“When you’re still coming out of a recession, and Nevada is still coming out of a recession, it’s difficult to predict what this economy is going to do over the next two years and there’s not a lot of hope that suddenly it’s just going to boom, it’s going to skyrocket upwards. It most likely will continue on at the pace that it’s continuing on,” Sebelius says. 

Dave Tina, president, Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors

Leigh Butler, home buyer

BY AMY KINGSLEY -- If you want to buy a house in Las Vegas, you have to move fast. That’s the best advice for prospective homebuyers who aren’t walking around with wallets full of cash, according to Dave Tina, president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

“Find a real estate agent that they get along with and feel is highly competent,” Tina said. “Know that that realtor will go out with them everyday a house goes on the market, the day the house goes on the market, and they will get a house.”

“When you find a house you like, make an offer immediately,” Tina said. “In today’s market, you have to be willing to buy right away. In Las Vegas, you’re ready to buy that day or that week and close a month later. Houses that come on the market are usually gone within a week.”

Home buyers called in to share their stories of woe, but Tina said that persistent customers will eventually find homes.

“I don’t think anyone is going to leave Las Vegas because they won’t get a house,” Tina said.

Annual Income For Top Ten Highest Paid DJs (Forbes)

 1. Tiesto -- $22 million

 2. Skrillex -- $15 million

 3. Swedish House Mafia -- $14 million

 4. David Guetta -- $13.5 million

 5. Steve Aoki -- $12 million

 6. Deadmau5 -- $11.5 million

 7. DJ Pauly D -- $11 million

 8. Kaskade -- $10 million

 9. Afrojack -- $9 million

10. Avicii -- $7 million

GUEST

Ryan Mac, writer, Forbes

Elizabeth Becker, author, Overbooked

BY LEE HERNANDEZ -- Once reserved as a luxury for the wealthy, tourism and vacations have become a worldwide industry that employs as many as one in thirteen people globally.

That’s according to the new book “Overbooked” by author Elizabeth Becker.

“Tourism is very much a product of globalization which is the creation of a huge new middle class around the world,” Becker said in an interview on State of Nevada.  “It’s all how do you want to spend that extra money and around the world the answer has been ‘I want to travel and see what else is out there.’”

Becker never intended to visit Las Vegas while writing "Overbooked," saying it was too cliché, but the city  turned out to be a perfect example of everything that has changed in tourism.  “Now you are depending on meetings and conventions, and making the people from around the country and around the world enjoy themselves," Becker said. "It’s much more middle class now, much less risk taking.”

In “Overbooked,” Becker also highlights medical tourism as one of the new worldwide growing trends in the travel industry. “It’s part of the ability to turn anything into a vacation,” Becker said.  “Americans -- even after the passage of what is now known as ‘Obamacare’ --  Americans still don’t have the kind of health insurance they want or can afford, and as they come up against big ticket health problems, they are being wooed more and more by foreign countries.”

Other, even bigger-ticket surgeries, Becker said, are now being done in Southeast Asia in countries like Malaysia, Bangkok and India where you can get an operation at a fraction of the cost with a vacation package thrown in with your medical care. 

Rosemary Flores, organizer and activist

Marco Rauda, associate, Ramirez Group

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Today, when thousands march on May Day in support of undocumented workers, they’re building on the history of the highly-attended 2006 May Day protests. Inspired by proposed legislation that would have drastically increased penalties for undocumented immigrants, those demonstrations drew thousands of workers to major cities, most notably 300,000 to Chicago.

“There was a lot of fear inside of the Latino community. Not only that, seeing people picked up Gestapo style at the work sites,” says Marco Rauda, a political consultant with the Ramirez Group. “People were just a little tired of it. They were a little scared of what was going to happen to their relatives, they were a little scared of what was going to happen to their friends. So they decided to take action.”  

Among the issues affecting undocumented workers in the U.S. today, according to activist Rosemary Flores, is the need for driving privilege cards. She says her car was once hit by a Chinese immigrant who was unlicensed and uninsured.

“It’s a safety issue,” says Flores. “They should have access to insurance and at least a privilege card.”

Flores says legislation that is friendly to immigrants is ultimately beneficial to everyone.

This not only affects our future, but our economy,” says Flores. “They’re here to pay taxes, they’re here to work.”

Leslie Arnold, Assistant Superintendent, Clark County School District

Linda Gojak, President, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Two-thirds of Clark County sophomores failed their math proficiency exam, an echo of what happened to reading scores in 2011 when the state raised those standards.

“We kind of had an expectation that we would see this drop, because we did have the raising of the passing score for the first time,” says Leslie Arnold, Assistant Superintendent, Clark County School District. “From 2011 the cut score was 242 to pass the math portion. This year it was raised to 300.”

Arnold says one of the reasons students may have poor performance is because students’ coursework isn’t as advanced as the concepts tested. Another reason is the schools aren’t teaching advanced math soon enough – she says student should learn advanced math beginning in the middle school grades.  

But Linda Gojak, President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics says middle school is too late.

“I think we need to start to think about when kids enter 1^st and 2^nd grade, what kind of foundation we are laying for their understanding of the mathematical context and concepts, so that as they approach middle school they have the foundation that’s laid, they are prepared to take on more abstract concepts that eventually lead to what happens in the high school,” says Gojak.

Jon Ralston, Ralston Reports

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- A legal scholar calls it “problematic.” Pundit Jon Ralston says “it doesn’t look good.”

A PAC associated with Senator Harry Reid accepted a donation from a law firm during the time frame that Reid was considering Jennifer Dorsey, one of the firm’s lawyers, for a federal judgeship.

“Two people that she works for give $150,000 to a super PAC run by former Harry Reid employees that clearly has a nexus to Harry Reid,” says Ralston.

One of the partners, Will Kemp, says that Reid contacted him for support in early 2012.

“It was back then you may recall that the Dems are very worried about holding on to the Senate. And so (Reid) told him he needed some money and then said he could either give directly to the senators involved in any of the states, or he could give to the super PAC. And as Will Kemp described to me, that seemed to be the preferred route. You can give a lot more money,” says Ralston.

Ralston says that while the donations were legal, both the amount of the contributions and the timeframe create issues for the senator.

“Is there a legal problem here? I don’t think that there’s a legal problem so much as a perception problem,” says Ralston. “Although you never know what kind of complaint may be filed by the Federal Elections Commission, but those usually amount to nothing.”

Ralston says the irony is that Kemp says that Dorsey is “a real rainmaker” for the law firm, and losing her to a judgeship would cost him a lot of money.

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- In an “unprecedented” move,  the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has recommended Officer Jacquar Roston be fired for questionable use of deadly force.

Roston shot a man in the leg while intervening in domestic violence dispute. He used his gun because he mistook shiny material on the man’s hat for a firearm.

Up until now the story hasn’t gotten much press, says Las Vegas Review Journal reporter Mike Blasky.

“This is not one of those Stanley Gibson type shootings, or Trevon Cole, or Erik Scott where there’s been days and days of media coverage. This one slipped through the cracks for several reasons, mostly because we never received information on who (the man shot) was.”

Blasky says the move to fire the officer is a result of the Use of Force Board changing their procedures following a Justice Department investigation into the LVMPD’s policies. He says the Board now looks at the decisions leading up to use of force, rather than the exact moment the officer fired his gun.

“From what I heard from the Use of Force Board – which is not a public meeting, so I don’t know exactly what was said – they were very critical of Roston’s decision making leading up to this event,” says Blasky. “It was a slow-moving situation and there was no reason in the Use of Force Board’s mind to use deadly force in that situation. They were very critical and they have recommended him for termination.”

Blasky says ultimately Sheriff Doug Gillespie will determine whether or not Roston remains with Metro.

Phillip Reese, Reporter, Sacramento Bee

Steve Sebelius, Columnist, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Jonna Triggs, Former Director, Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services

Sue Gaines, President, National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Nevada

BY AMY KINGSLEY -- Monday, Gov. Brian Sandoval publicly acknowledged that the state had put ten psychiatric patients on buses and sent them out of state, to places where they had no family members or arrangements for treatment.

The governor fired two staff members and disciplined three others. But investigations are still being conducted by the federal government and cities in California into almost 1,500 cases where patients at Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital were bused out of state.

The widespread practice of putting patients on buses was uncovered by reporters at the Sacramento Bee. Phillip Reese, one of the reporters on the story, said the use of busing to discharge patients has escalated in recent years.

“We found that the practice increased as the years went on, as these budget cuts really started to bite,” Reese said. “So it was happening more frequently in the last year than it was three or four years ago. “

Steve Sebelius, political columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said he doesn’t believe the scandal is over. The number of patients who have been improperly discharged has been creeping steadily higher since the story broke last month. But right now, most of the outrage over patient busing is happening in California, with minimal response right here in Nevada.

“I got into an argument with some people on Facebook,” Sebelius said. “They say, ‘Why should Nevada pay? Why shouldn’t we bus them back?’”

Before its recent revision, the policy for busing patients in Nevada actually advocated the practice as a way to cut costs.

“I note with great irony that the former policy regarding busing said that the purpose of the busing policy was in order to provide more appropriate care and to remove the burden of treatment from the state of Nevada ,” Sebelius said.

That word, “burden,” prompted a discussion of how the state views people with mental illness.

Sue Gaines, president of the National Alliance for Mental Illness in Southern Nevada, wondered whether the state would use the same language to describe someone who suffered a heart attack.

“Always mental illness is treated differently than any other illness,” Gaines said.

GUEST

Navin Twarakavi, research professor, Desert Research Institute

GUEST

Allison Chin, President, Sierra Club

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- A Kansas mother believes that if the police had access to cell phone GPS data, her daughter might be alive today. Missy Smith shared her story before the Nevada Assembly prior to the senate approving SB 268, which would grant Nevada law enforcement agencies that power.

“In circumstances where there are real-life immediate emergencies and cell phone access could assist law enforcement in resolving an issue such as saving a life, I think that this bill is going to help them do exactly that,” says Sen. Aaron Ford, one of the bill’s sponsors.

According to Ford, a law enforcement official facing an immediate emergency, such as an abduction, would call into Nevada’s Department of Public Safety with the request. The police would then contact the cell phone company for the latest information available about the cell user’s GPS.

The Nevada ACLU is “neutral” on the bill, according to Ford, but they did play a role in shaping the language.

“They provided an amendment that required any situation to be an immediate emergency situation as opposed to it being, quote, ‘an emergency,’” says Ford. “Rest assured that any abuse of this system is going to be monitored and dealt with.”

The bill now goes before the assembly.

GUEST

Steve Friess, reporter, Politico

(Photo: Las Vegas Review Journal)

Steve Friess: "He was the drag act that made drag a mainstream acceptable art form, and of course, Las Vegas helped ... he became a figure who could talk dirty and perform and straight people came to see him. Perhaps only in Las Vegas would that transition happen where straight people would find a drag act to be something they could go to that they wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell people. In fact, they’d come home and say ‘I went to Las Vegas and you’re not going to believe what I saw.’"

(Photo: Douglas Kirkland)

"Kenny was a wonderful person and he was generous and he was in fact, too generous for his own good. And he was a terrible businessman. He would get into fights with people, people would steal his money, he would have gigs that he wouldn’t get paid for. He didn’t know how to keep his finances in order in a way that would sustain him as a person or as a performer."

(Photo: Las Vegas, Nevada OutHistory entry on Boylesque)

"And he was just really funny. I mean there was something abut his humor, it wasn't just dirty or bawdy, it was clever and smart. People really reacted to it, you know, and I’m telling you, there are a lot of people for whom Kenny Kerr would have been the first gay person they ever saw on stage, or anywhere."

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- After all of the discourse and speculation, can it be that the new Clark County Schools Superintendent is already in place? According to board member Chris Garvey, interim superintendent Pat Skorkowsky should be offered the job.

“In the last few weeks, we’ve seen Pat really step up to the plate and exhibit those characteristics that I want to see in a new superintendent,” says Garvey. “The beauty of it is, Pat already knows the system. He knows the people, he knows the classrooms, he knows what we’ve been through, and he’s been a part of the change that we’ve really embraced.”

Garvey says this isn’t just her opinion, but it’s what she’s overwhelmingly hearing from her constituents.

“From the person at the grocery store, to the library and even in my dental chair. They are all saying the same thing. We need to keep Pat here,” says Garvey.

The Clark County School Board continues hosting public meetings in an effort to gauge the community's thoughts on who should be the next superintendent.

“As you know, the board is made up of seven individuals, and so majority rules,” says Garvey. “We are waiting for the public input. I’ve heard enough input from my constituents to know what I’m going to do.”

GUEST

Eli Segall, reporter, Las Vegas Sun and Vegas Inc. 

GUEST

Peter Tarlow, president, Tourism and More

GUESTS

Bob List, Governor, 1979-1983

Richard Bryan, Governor, 1983-1988

GUESTS

Anthony Gibson, Brewer, Tenaya Creek

Dave Otto, Brewer, Big Dog