During his election campaign, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman distanced himself from the way the past city administration ran roughshod over the property rights of law-abiding property owners.
Candidate Goodman said he particularly opposed the city seizing private property and then turning it over to private third parties, under the guise of "public use." To this day, the mayor contends that's his position.
Yet in what is almost certainly the greatest ongoing injustice of its kind in Nevada (if not the nation) the widow Carol Pappas, now 71, has never received a penny in compensation for her downtown property -- or any of the $60,000 per year in rents she formerly collected from the small shopkeepers who operated stores there.
In early 1994, the city of Las Vegas decided to seize and bulldoze the half-block of small retail businesses at Carson Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, half a block from where the "Neonopolis" project now rises. The city then built a parking garage on the site, promptly turning title to the land and new building over to the Fremont Street Limited Liability Corporation, a private corporation made up of the eight largest downtown casino owners.
The city's idea of "compensation" was to arrive at a modest sum based on the land's assessed valuation, and put it in a bank account for Mrs. Pappas. There was a catch, however. If the widow Pappas or her family touched a single penny, even to hire a lawyer, they would be waiving their right to fight the property seizure, or even to negotiate the amount to be paid.
Every other downtown landowner -- including even former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht -- caved in to this extortionate method, fearing they would otherwise face years of foot-dragging through the courts, all at their own expense.
But Carol Pappas is made of different stuff. A Greek immigrant who remembers the Nazi occupation of her homeland, she came to what she still calls "the land of the free" to marry the late John Pappas, who was giving away free soup to the poor out the back door of his White Spot restaurant on Fremont Street when they built Hoover Dam -- before most of our current big-hat casino owners even hit town. Her husband left her their downtown properties as a source of income for her old age -- little thinking what would happen to our property rights in the meantime.
The widow Pappas bravely decided to fight city hall.
Lo and behold, an honest jurist, District Court Judge Don Chairez, ruled for the Pappas family in 1996. The city Redevelopment Agency had violated its own rules -- as well as the law and the constitution -- in seizing the property, Judge Chairez ruled. The law requires the Redevelopment Agency to allow land owners to "participate" in redevelopment, through ground leases if nothing else. Yet Mrs. Pappas was never given any such opportunity. The city never proved the area was blighted (a requirement for seizure); it never proved the casino owners couldn't afford to buy the land for themselves, and it certainly never demonstrated that a privately-owned parking garage constitutes a vital "public use."
Judge Chairez found the city in the wrong, and ruled the property seizure null and void. The city immediately appealed Judge Chairez's ruling to the state Supreme Court. Last week, after three-and-a-half years, briefs were finally filed there -- along with a city filing of more than 5,000 pages of accompanying documents.
Mayor Goodman says he has no choice but to allow this slow dance of obstruction to continue, because the city's attorneys -- doubtless already paid more than $1 million, with more to come -- tell him he has to.
Worse, when a separate five-acre parcel belonging to Mrs. Pappas near Ann Road and U.S. 95 in the fast-growing northwest part of town was recently and improperly rezoned for "government offices only," the mayor refused to let the city correct the mistake, apparently in order to punish the Pappases for refusing to settle their unrelated downtown claim for a few dimes on the dollar.
"I don't want to hear about the Pappases being abused any more!" the mayor stormed on Feb. 1, when I asked him why he doesn't just give the property back as the court has ordered.
The issue here is much larger than one elderly taxpayer forced to stand by and watch her late husband's legacy bulldozed, of course. If government can get away with this, who is safe from having his property seized and turned over to a politically well-connected neighbor who simply doesn't want to pay the asking price?
This has gone on long enough. Mayor Goodman should drop the city's appeal. He should personally contact the Pappas family and ask what it would take to make them whole.
If the mayor does not settle this case quickly and personally, however, then the state Supreme Court should defy expectations that such cases are as good as "fixed" by the campaign contributions of the big casino owners. Judge Chairez's decision was a model of rectitude, close reasoning, and rigorous legal research. In an expedited finding, the state Supreme Court should uphold that ruling in favor of the Pappas family.
Fast.
Contributions to the Carol Pappas defense fund: c/o attorney Grant Gerber, 491 Fourth St., Elko, Nev. 89801.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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