The state Tax Commission today voted unanimously (with one member abstaining) to ask the state Taxation Department to investigate the Las Vegas Monorail, with an eye toward whether the monorail’s exemption from state sales tax is justified. Tax Commissioner George Kelesis publicly questioned whether the monorail should enjoy the exemption, since millions were paid to a for-profit company to manage the system, which runs from the MGM Grand to the Sahara, with several stops in between.

During a hearing at the Grant Sawyer State Office Building, commissioners heard testimony from Taxation Department Director Charles Chinnock, who said the monorail received no special treatment when it was granted tax-exempt status in 2003. Factors in the decision included the fact that the monorail was governed by a non-profit company, dubbed the Las Vegas Monorail Co., and that there were no objections from the Regional Transportation Commission.

Then again, the non-profit Las Vegas Monorail Corp. contracted (for millions in fees) with the for-profit Transit Systems Management, a partnership of the late Bob Broadbent and Cam Walker. Transit Systems Management actually ran the system, but the non-profit status allowed Broadbent and Walker to get $653 million in tax-exempt state bonds with which to build the system. (Neither man committed much personal wealth to the venture.) And the Regional Transportation Commission at the time was run by Jacob Snow, a former Broadbent employee at McCarran International Airport, who replaced a pointedly anti-monorail Kurt Weinrich at the helm of the RTC.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Greg Zunino, who actually wrote the memo that advised the Taxation Department to grant the tax-exempt status, said he was initially skeptical of the monorail’s application to avoid taxes, since it only carries tourists to and from hotels and the convention center. But he said he was persuaded that it had a public benefit, in that it eased congestion and improved air quality. “I viewed this project as having great potential to serve the Las Vegas community,” he said.

But under questioning from Kelesis, Zunino admitted he didn’t even know Transit Management Systems existed when he wrote his memo, and that a $23 million payment to the company could be a way to funnel money to private profit, which is not allowed under the state’s law allowing charities to avoid sales taxes. He said he didn’t delve too deeply into the corporate structure, because the state’s Department of Business and Industry and Board of Finance (headed by Gov. Kenny Guinn) had already granted the monorail’s request to use tax-exempt state bonds.

“My thought process, these particular issues had already been hashed out, so I did not delive into these particular issues in detail,” Zunino said.

Although Kelesis tried to persuade the board to set a hearing considering revoking the monorail’s tax-exempt status, Jones Vargas attorney Jim Wadhams, representing the monorail, objected. First, Wadhams said, an investigation has to be conducted so the monorail will be able to defend itself from specific charges at a revocation hearing. And the commission, Wadhams argued, cannot both investigate and hold a hearing to revoke the status. Kelesis ultimately agreed, asking the department to investigate.

So, to sum: The very same Taxation Department that may have wrongly granted tax-exempt status to what was essentially a casino shuttle run by a for-profit company owned by two heavily juiced players will investigate … itself. We predict an acquittal, but we’re cynical that way. The report should be ready for the Tax Commission’s November meeting. Will the monorail have reason to give thanks? Stay tuned.

Weekend update

We at Various Things & Stuff flew north this weekend, to attend the Nevada Press Association convention at Lake Tahoe. (We did win an award, for our columns that previously appeared in the Review-Journal, but it was third place, and that doesn’t really count.)

Our point is that we were unable to read and immediately blog about the mini-media controversy of the weekend, the R-J’s story about Assembly Speaker (and, starting this week, official gubernatorial candidate) Richard Perkins getting booted from Spring Valley Hospital.

Our colleagues in the blogosphere, including Hugh Jackson and Jon Ralston, blogged and e-mailed about the story, by R-J medical writer Paul Harasim. Now let the record show we think Harasim is a good reporter, with an eye for the telling detail.

But Jackson, writing in the Las Vegas Gleaner, savaged the story as an example of right-wing media bias, as did Ralston in his daily FLASH e-mail newsletter. (You can read Jackson’s posting here: http://www.lasvegasgleaner.com/las_vegas_gleaner…)

(A side note to readers: Our ability to link directly to other blogs hasn’t been working well, and thus we’ve been forced to rely on the old print-the-whole-address thing. We’re working on that, just as soon as we can finish fixing the margarita machine here at our nondescript industrial building somewhere near McCarran International Airport.)

Jackson first quibbles with the story’s lead, which lets “hospital officials” make the outrageous (and, as we see later in the story, patently untrue) claim Perkins “placed in danger” patient’s lives. This is followed by hospital marketing director Lori Harris, who for two paragraphs expounds on why Perkins endangered patients’ lives.

It’s not until right before the jump do we learn that Perkins never even saw a patient, much less interfered with patient care.

Now, our rule of thumb when dealing with “officials” is to disbelieve everything they say until otherwise proven by documents, additional research or eyewitness accounts. And that goes double for hospital officials, who in the Las Vegas Valley have been known to stretch truth in order to put themselves in a better profit-making position. And that goes triple when you mix politics and hospital officials.

In fact, in an ironic twist, Harasim reports hospital officials actually ordered nurses at Spring Valley to go home because they were wearing pro-union buttons, orders that surely put patients’ lives in danger. (Their actions, in fact, are why Perkins says he came to the hospital in the first place.) And that’s why we have a problem with Harasim’s lead, which easily could have read, “Anti-union hospital officials, who put patient’s lives in danger by ordering union button-wearing nurses to go home, ironically accused a pro-union public official of endangering patients when he came to the facility to investigate. Those officials are liars, of course, and nothing they say should ever be believed.”

Granted, it’s a tad harsh, and perhaps unfair. But not much more than the lead and first couple paragraphs of the story that was actually published.

Now, as we said, Harasim is a good reporter, and the facts of the story came out, if you read to the end. But the way the piece was crafted prompted Jackson and Ralston to question whether this was a hit piece on one of the three Democratic candidates for governor. And the R-J is especially vulnerable on that point when we read paragraphs like this, deep into the piece: “Marketing director Harris would not explain how Perkins’ visit to the hospital endangered the lives of patients. ‘You’ve got the statement, and that’s all you’re going to get, sorry,’ she said, giggling.”

Clearly, Harris was making things up, and the R-J knew it, or should have known it. So why give credence to some flack’s giggled charges for the first three paragraphs of the story when you have an eyewitness (a nurse) who contradicts what the official said?

Now, we’re not going to go so far as Jackson and suggest that the story was either deliberately written or edited to hurt Perkins. We’ve simply got no proof of that, although we admit proof in cases like this is hard to come by. We can only judge by what we read, and what we read is this: The first part of the story is entirely disproved by the rest of it, which, in journalism, is a problem.

Oh, one last thing: Virtually the only fact that wasn’t in Harasim’s report was this: Perkins went to the hospital not so much to sympathize with the nurses, but to collect some union backing. He had a bit of a falling out with unions during the 2005 Legislature (especially the Culinary Union, over a neighborhood casino bill aimed at Station Casinos). So don’t let anybody dress him up as Florence Nightengale on this one, metaphorically speaking. If he dresses himself up as Florence Nightengale, however, please let us at Various Things & Stuff know. We like to keep track of that stuff.

And Perkins doesn’t help his case any by saying things like this: “This really pisses me off. If they’re trying to run over someone with their lies, they’ve picked on the wrong man. I may consider legal action.”

C’mon, Mr. Speaker. You’re a cop. You carry and gun and a badge. You’re one of the state’s top political leaders. And you’re talking about suing? Anybody who read the whole story here knows who’s telling the truth. Be content with winning a verdict in the court of public opinion.

As for people who only read the first few paragraphs? Well, that’s another story…