Jon Ralston

How do you feel about a special session of the Legislature this summer to divert public money to a billionaire and an NFL franchise?

I know what you’re thinking: When did this guy become a stand-up comedian?

But this is no joke.

Last week, Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis, brought to Nevada by major-domo Sheldon Adelson, pitched a committee created by Gov. Brian Sandoval on a stadium that was portrayed as a gift to taxpayers even as it picked their pockets. The presentation by Davis, soccer icon David Beckham and Adelson minions was a cross between a David Copperfield magic show and Professor Harold Hill’s marching band – lots of flash and sizzle but too much sleight of hand.

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No one on the public-private panel was willing to play the sad trombone, although some pointed questions were asked, while Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, whose family has prized stadia and pro sports over, well, anything, could only gush: “Wow.”

Adelson’s newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, treated the story of the possible Raiders move to Las Vegas as akin to the Second Coming – the first, of course, being the Las Vegas Sands chairman’s purchase of the state’s largest media outlet. If you don’t think being worth $30 billion and owning a major newspaper makes you feel like God …

Like any sports fan, I would love to see the state get a professional sports franchise. I haven’t really liked the Raiders since the days of the Snake and Biletnikoff – I’m a Buffalo Bills lifer. But I’d be happy to become a fan in what, as Davis’ prepared and pithy remark said, would become “The Silver and Black State.”

I hope they move to Las Vegas. But not at any cost, and especially not if the public is being asked to kick in $750 million of the $1.4 billion price tag. That number would not even have been revealed at the hearing Thursday if not for the herculean efforts of Chairman Steve Hill, the state’s economic development czar who knows a little about complex deals (see Tesla and Faraday).

The magical presentation somehow left out that number; indeed, Davis and his boosters tried to elide the actual taxpayer contribution with a misleading chart. And talk of a special session already has percolated to the Gang of 63, some of whom could be swayed by Adelson, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to legislative campaigns and to Sandoval. (A special session can only be called by the governor or by two-thirds of the Legislature.)

This is déjà vu, both in Nevada and everywhere, where stadium boondoggles are the rule not the exception, where the public often is asked to pony up to make owners and developers richer. As the seminal stadium guide “Field of Schemes,” put it: “How one big-money industry has manipulated democratic institutions to boost its own profits.”

This, of course, is just a microcosm of how most developers, billionaires or not, see government: as a means to their ends, some of which benefit the community, some of which do not.

Special interests hire lobbyists to go to Carson City to make their clients more money, not less. They exist to manipulate government to change laws to their benefit. Fine.

But what is the public benefit?

Many stadium measures have failed in Carson City, including Adelson’s in 2015, which resulted in the governor’s executive order to form the committee that heard the Ari Gold-like pitch Thursday – and Ari never had Beckham bending heads. Several other too-good-to-be-true-unless-you-are-the-developer bills in 2011 also failed, multifarious schemes that had the “Field of Schemes” authors chuckling: “Las Vegas still has more arena and stadium plans than you can shake a stick at, but pretty much all of them have one thing in common: They'd use tax increment financing, the much-derided financing scheme that kicks back property taxes (and sometimes other taxes) to help a developer pay off construction costs.”

And guess what mechanism Adelson and Davis want to use? Yes, a murky tax increment district, one that will redirect money back to the wealthy developers over decades. How much money? Maybe the entire cost, as the “Field of Schemes” site pointed out in a post headlined, “Davis pledges $500m toward Vegas stadium, could actually ask taxpayers to pay entire $1.4B cost.” (The counterargument always is that there would be no taxes there if the development isn’t there.)

I can’t wait to see lawmakers make the case to their constituents that they are taking room tax money to pay for Adelson’s dream while students suffer in crowded classrooms, roads are pockmarked with potholes and social services are neither social nor services.

As if there’s not enough salt in the wound, consider that the special taxing district also would reroute live entertainment tax money out of the general fund and – wait for it – contains an exemption for teams based in Nevada.

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“The Raiders franchise is proposing to play in a stadium financed in part by a tax from which the team exempt by statute,” one lawyer explained. Such a deal. For them. And Adelson.

Meanwhile, UNLV, which desperately needs a new stadium, obviously was used as a public relations patsy by Adelson and Davis, who now says other sites away from the university are under consideration. Goodman swooned, but UNLV President Len Jessup looked as if he might faint.

There’s also the little matter of the NFL owners having to sign off, which is a long shot. And the public funding component, which will be adjusted by the committee, will have to come down a lot – the average subsidy for an NFL stadium is $262 million – unless Adelson has even more juice than I thought.

Gov. Brian Sandoval’s office says he hasn’t been asked to call a Sheldon, er special, session after the committee finishes in July. But I bet the call from The Venetian is coming.

So I ask again: How do you feel about a special session of the Legislature this summer to divert public money to a billionaire and an NFL franchise? Or perhaps I should put it another way:

How many pieces of silver will it take for the politicians to put Adelson and the Raiders in the black?

Jon Ralston has been covering Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century. See his blog at ralstonreports.com and watch "Ralston Live" at 5:30 p.m. weekdays on KNPB.