I had to file a public record request for my Las Vegas water usage

Posted on by May 18, 2017
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Las Vegas water recordsAs a journalist for nearly a half-century, I literally have filed hundreds of freedom of information act/public records requests to get documents from government agencies. In cases decades apart and quite separate, I got the secret testimonies to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission of Apple CEO Steve Jobs and later-to-be-fugitive-financier Robert Vesco.

I obtained proof of Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover’s jealousy about all the attention the 1960s TV show “The Untouchables” gave to rival lawman Eliot Ness, and how the agency monitored the personal life of secretly gay actor Rock Hudson. I showed the odd FBI surveillance of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe (whose name was misspelled in agency reports every single time), the poet John Ciardi and sports editor Lester Rodney of the Communist Party daily newspaper the Daily Worker. I even used disclosure laws to get dog-attack records from the U.S. Postal Service (along with an apology for illegally not providing them faster).

But no request I ever filed was quite as strange as the one I made recently after becoming New To Las Vegas. I was forced to draft and send a formal plea under the Nevada Public Records Act to get my own water records.

I am not making this up. Read on. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Pa. official hit for okaying trip to Las Vegas Mirage

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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It Didn't Stay Here

Mirage Resort (via MGM Resorts International)

I guess when you live in  hardscrabble northeastern Pennsylvania–especially the area around Easton–any trip to Las Vegas by government workers on the public dime can look suspect. Amy Trapp, the HR director of Northampton County, Pa., of which Easton is the county seat, is on the hot seat for $2,343 spent by two of her workers to fly to Las Vegas, stay at the fancy Mirage Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and attend a training seminar.

Although it doesn’t seem that any rules were broken, the trip has caused a political brouhaha far from Las Vegas. So I’m nominating Trapp for my new list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The list–a play on that great Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here“–consists of folks having problems somewhere else for things that happened in Vegas. Earlier nominations can be found elsewhere on this page. Continue reading →

Shadowy outfit rating medical pros operates in Las Vegas

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Shadowy outfit raring medical pros

Material from Consumers’ Research Council of America hanging in the waiting room of a Las Vegas dental practice

As someone New To Las Vegas, I’ve had to get a new set of medical professionals to help keep me alive and functioning: doctors, specialists, dentists and the like. So it pains me to report this. On the walls of offices and waiting rooms I keep seeing laudatory plaques and literature issued by a shadowy ratings group with a misleading name and banal standards set up by a California trophy maker for, it seems, the purpose of selling overpriced plaques.

The group calls itself Consumers’ Research Council of America. Now, if you get that confused with Consumers Union, the publisher of the highly respected magazine Consumer Reports, it’s probably no surprise. And if you think the address Consumers’ Research Council of America lists on its website of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington just four blocks from the White House is a prestige location, think again: It’s simply a mail drop at a UPS store. And don’t bother calling the phone number on the home page either. It is answered by a tape that won’t take a message.

The image elsewhere on this page is that of a hanging on the waiting room wall of a Las Vegas dentist I mercifully will not name. It’s far from the first Consumers’ Research Council of America “endorsement” I have seen around Sin City.

Don’t believe me? Just Google “Las Vegas” and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” (make sure to include the apostrophe), or click on this link. You will get scores of hits of medical and other professionals touting this big honor. Hanging out in the suburbs? Google “Henderson” and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” and you’ll get dozens. Hell, even Googling “Summerlin” (a well-to-do section of the Las Vegas area) and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” pulls up a bunch.

Consumers’ Research Council of America operates nationally. For proof, try my little Google search trick inserting any city in the country you want.

The reason I know something about this is that I wrote up Consumers’ Research Council of America and its m.o. in 2009 for Forbes.com. You can read that story by clicking here. From my further research, it doesn’t seem that things have changed too much.

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It Didn’t Stay Here: Las Vegas meeting leads to New York convictions

Posted on by July 27, 2017
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It Didn't Stay Here

William T. “Billy” Walters (via cardplayer.com)

Even before becoming New To Las Vegas, I had heard of Billy Walters. He was a big-time Vegas-based gambler–profiled in 2011 on 60 Minutes as “the most dangerous sports bettor in Nevada.”

Turns out Walters, whose full name is William T. Walters, also was a big-time stock investor. A little too big time, I might suggest. Last month, he was convicted in federal court in New York City on all 10 criminal counts he faced involving insider trading in publicly traded dairy company Dean Foods.

According to the indictment and rather abundant trial testimony, Walters used confidential information over six years to profit to the tune of $43 million, either by buying shares ahead of the release of good news or selling them just before bad stuff became known publicly. Walters used tips fed him by Thomas C. Davis, Dean Foods board member and sometimes chairman who was heavily indebted to Walters and who went state’s evidence as part of his own guilty plea to a dozen charges.

Walters, 70, who professed innocence, will appeal after he’s sentenced in July. (UPDATE: He was sentenced on July 27 to five years in prison and a $10 million fine.) He also earns a nomination to my new list, It Didn’t Stay Here. This is a roster of people who got into trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. The still-embryonic list–a riff on the celebrated Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here“–can be found elsewhere on this page.

How much of what Walters was convicted of actually took place in Las Vegas isn’t completely clear to me. I didn’t attend the four-week trial in Manhattan, and daily news accounts of the proceedings were intermittent. But according to the indictment–remember, Walters was convicted on all counts, so the jury found the totality of the charges convincing–Sin City was definitely a venue for some of his purported dirty dealings.

Continue reading →