While his father, Harry Reid, is enjoying newfound prominence as minority leader of the U.S. Senate, Rory Reid is stepping up to the chairmanship of the Clark County Commission just as one of his bully-pulpit issues—growth in the Valley—is becoming a sensitive subject. Reid came to office in 2002, part of a wave of electoral change on the Commission that has turned a body once noted for its fractiousness (and abject subservience to developers) into an outpost of collegiality.
This more-harmonious Commission has had its sour chords—such as being surprised with a "big box" Wal-Mart on Russell Road—but it moved an ambitious agenda forward. In addition to weighing how to manage urban growth without stunting it, the commissioners have instituted new, tougher ethics policies, capped the number and placement of billboards in Clark County and tried to stem the flood of nonconforming zoning variances.
Reid, who waived a first-term salary increase, stresses the importance of dialogue and compromise repeatedly. Although his desk—and the painting of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign on the wall behind it—makes an imposing setting, Reid prefers to conduct our conversation at a rough-hewn wooden coffee table at the other end of his Government Center office.
Is county business being conducted under a microscope because of G-Sting? Is the public more attentive?
Yes. People are more cynical. They deserve to be. We need to recognize why they are and do something about it.
The fundamental principle that we have to have in mind always is disclosure. We've done a lot to improve our ethics policies. Everybody's talking about the Growth Task Force now. They forget that, a couple of years ago, we had an Ethics Task Force that we convened, and they improved our policies significantly. When we have a conflict of interest, people know what it is.
Speaking as someone who was stuck in traffic on the way over ...
Ha! And you're surly because of it.
I hope not, but one of your main priorities when elected was mass transit. How much progress are you making?
We've made some progress but not enough. If we made all the seats on CAT buses golden and served caviar and lowered the fares, people still wouldn't [use] that system. So we need to create other opportunities for people to use mass transit.
It looks like you may have a "not in my back yard" issue with the light-rail corridor.
We hear a lot of "not in my back yard." The light-rail project that we've just started discussing will directly impact a number of people, many of whom live in my district. But just because somebody will be very directly impacted doesn't mean we stop the conversation, throw up our arms and change the subject. Other urban centers have shown the value of rail systems that bring people from the perimeters of the community to its core. If we didn't consider that and try to do it, we would be doing a disservice.
Lake Mead is falling roughly 15 feet a year. Are we living on borrowed time and borrowed water?
Our water resource is subject to cycles that we can't control, and we're in a difficult spot right now. Mother Nature has decided to give us the most significant drought in the history of the Mojave Desert. Just like anybody's financial portfolio, we need to diversify our water portfolio. Ninety percent of the water we use comes out of the Colorado River. That's not wise.
Many local golf courses were built without taking drought issues into account. Are they coming into line or hanging tough?
I was at a Southern Nevada Water Authority meeting earlier this morning, and we had a report that was encouraging. It was approaching 10 percent less water being used by golf courses since we implemented our drought measures in the last couple of years. Thus far, we've removed 32 million square feet of turf from our homes and businesses. If you think of an 18-inch-wide piece of sod and laid it, end on end, we've removed enough turf in Southern Nevada to cover one fourth of the globe. So we've done a pretty good job. All of us need to do much better.
Clark County is in the top quintile of crimes per capita nationally and the crime rate has increased 25 percent over the last two years. What can be done?
Hiring more police. We were down to 1.7 officers per thousand. If you look at the national average, that is not something to tout. We now have funding for a significant number of new police officers. That's the best way to address the problem.
What have you and the Commission learned from the Wal-Mart controversy?
That was in my district, so I know all about that. What I learned—and what the Commission learned generally—was that we needed to be more vigilant about how our public land is being used. We all own it, and we have a moral responsibility.
If Marnell Properties could redesign the site so much, in response to citizen protests, was the lease as ironclad as it was made out to be?
There was some uncertainty and a concern about litigation. It had a very large retail establishment within 300 feet of 600 homes. That was something I wouldn't let lie. So the choice was to either fight [in court] or try to reach a compromise. They moved the facility a half-mile away. Not everybody was holding hands and singing "Kumbaya," but we forced a compromise that addressed neighborhood concerns and will have amenities that will benefit the community.
How is the effort to abate noise from helicopter flights progressing?
We haven't done what we need to do, but we're further along than we were two years ago. Every time I have a neighborhood meeting I hear about this issue: Outbound helicopters that are headed toward the Grand Canyon fly right down Tropicana, through the middle of my district. Many people have lived there for decades, and when they moved there it wasn't an issue. Now dozens of helicopters fly over their back yards every day. What we need to do is find a nonurban heliport center. We've identified a preferred site and we're working to move that problem to an area where it won't affect people.
The Commission and Station Casinos have butted heads a couple of times. Are casinos proposing preposterously large properties with the idea of negotiating down to merely enormous ones? If the tower is zoned for 100 feet, then propose a 300-foot tower and compromise at 200?
I don't know what their strategy has been, but I know what our approach is. One of the hallmarks of this Commission is that whenever there is a matter of controversy we try to reach out to the community and create a mechanism where diverging voices are forced to deal with each other.
This Growth Task Force is an example of that. We have members of the Sierra Club and developers. They haven't agreed on everything. With the neighborhood casino proposals, we've done the same thing. When that 300-foot tower was proposed, everyone was outraged. Ultimately, after a number of hours of debate, a compromise was reached. It was a reasonable result that everybody could live with.
If anybody comes to us with some strategy which they think will squeeze the most out of whatever their proposal is, our answer to them will be, "You can say whatever you want, but what we're going to require you to do is run the gauntlet."
Whether it's Wal-Mart or Stations, are you dealing with brinkmanship here?
We're more sophisticated than that. Unreasonable proposals are obvious, and people have a sense of how this Commission is operating. They're less likely to come to us with something unreasonable today than maybe in the past.
Should your father hold another filibuster so he can finish reading his history of Searchlight to the Senate?
I'll leave that to him ... although it is a good read.
He says his childhood nickname was Pinky. What was yours?
No comment.
Which is better: Shaking hands with the president of the United States or high-fiving the CCSN Coyote?
[Guffaws] With due respect to the Coyote, I preferred shaking the president's hand. I'm just not a big coyote fan. I've had some experiences with coyotes [in Searchlight], but they've been positive experiences.