Reid gets guarantees agencies won’t discriminate against Las Vegas for business travel

^{Like a teenybopper collecting letters from pen pals, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has compiled quite a stash of missives.}

^{But these letters (thankfully) don't detail classroom crushes or track gossip about the latest teen hearthrob named Cody or Brandon or whatever.}

^{Rather, they provide assurance that federal agencies won't officially discriminate against Sin City when they're laying plans for business travel.}

^{Gaining such guarantees is a mission Reid's been on since July, after a Wall Street Journal article claimed that federal employees were "being encouraged" to conduct meetings in buttoned-down cities such as St. Louis, Milwaukee and Denver. The newspaper reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation spurned a New York-New York conference planner who tried to book an agency meeting. The bureau's parent, the Department of Justice, had decided conferences couldn't happen in vacation destinations with spas, resorts and gambling.}

^{After the article ran, Reid sent letters to Cabinet secretaries and heads of every federal agency to request that they reject travel policies discriminating against specific cities.}

^{Reid on Monday released letters from officials at 12 federal bureaus. The statements all provided variations on the same theme: Our department doesn't maintain any rule classifying Las Vegas or Reno as inappropriate meeting destinations. The Federal Reserve, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Trade Commission -- all said they don't discriminate against Nevada.}

^{The Department of Justice told Reid that neither it nor its law-enforcement agencies prohibit official travel to any location.}

^{Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said her agency doesn't discriminate against Las Vegas mostly because its employees don't travel much. The federally sponsored corporation has a large conference facility in suburban Washington, D.C., that houses most of its meetings.}

^{Steven Walther, chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said his bureau doesn't intentionally avoid Las Vegas, either. His letter detailed a meeting schedule of three regional conferences a year that rotate among U.S. cities, though Walther's roster of markets hosting the meetings between 2007 and 2010 didn't list Las Vegas. It did include Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla.}

^{A letter from Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, noted that Shinseki spent July 21 in Las Vegas as a keynote speaker at the Annual Champions of Veterans Enterprise awards ceremony. Veterans Affairs held the ceremony in conjunction with the National Veterans Small Business Conference and Expo.}

^{"I am pleased that these federal agencies understand the importance of this issue and have replied so quickly," Reid said in a statement. "I'm encouraged that these agencies have made it clear that their policies are in line with the administration's -- that there is no restriction on travel to places like Las Vegas and Reno."}

^{Vince Alberta, vice president of public affairs at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said Reid's efforts will help bring clarity to federal directives regarding travel to leisure destinations.}

^{"There is no destination that provides the value and experience of Las Vegas," Alberta said. "As we host more than 20,000 meetings and conventions annually, it is well-understood that Las Vegas is a place where serious business can take place."}

^{It's difficult to measure the effect government travel might have on the local economy. The authority doesn't track numbers on how many federal agencies visit Southern Nevada, because such meetings happen inside ballrooms at local hotels and not at the authority's Las Vegas Convention Center.}

^{But Bill Thompson, a gaming expert and public affairs professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, said federal travel edicts against the state could hurt broader visitation volume in the market, so Reid is "right to be on this."}

^{Thompson pointed to President Barack Obama's Feb. 9 statement that companies receiving bailout money shouldn't take trips to Las Vegas or the Super Bowl at taxpayers' expense. Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs canceled or relocated planned events in Las Vegas right after the comments, and insurance giant State Farm backed out of a meeting that would have delivered 11,000 room nights to the market.}

^{"If companies feel the government is avoiding travel to Las Vegas, then they will act adversely to Las Vegas, and it will hurt us," Thompson said. "Our general business is down 15 to 20 percent, and we're not going to come out of this funk if the federal government or any people in positions of influence are telling companies, 'Don't go to Vegas, don't touch Vegas.'"}

^{Thompson added that he isn't sure Reid's efforts will bear fruit in better visitation.}

^{He said federal agencies will say on the record that they don't discriminate against Las Vegas, even if they tacitly do classify Las Vegas as off-limits.}

^{Thompson also said Reid's continual highlighting of the issue could eventually hurt the Democrats politically, because the flap over business travel to Las Vegas began with Obama's remarks.}

^{Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.}