NPRI responds to convention authority criticism

The Nevada Policy Research Institute has copped to some mistakes in its lengthy criticism of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

But the conservative group that's long counted itself as a political opponent of the authority still stands by the extensive report.

Andy Matthews, vice president of communications for NPRI, Thursday morning responded to the authority’s criticism of the report, which was aimed at how the authority oversees spending of tax dollars.

"There were a couple of instances where they did, I believe, in their report catch something that we initially had an erroneous figure for," Matthews said.

He said the online version of the NPRI report has been annotated to reflect the changes.

For now, the errors are marked with either a "#" or an "*" sign and they are denoted later in the text, making it difficult for readers to pick out the mistakes and corrections. Matthews says there are a total of eight such notations. He also said NPRI is working to highlight them more clearly.

Matthews also defended a decision to compile the report based solely on public records and without interviews to give the material further context.

"What we wanted to do was take the information and, to the greatest extent possible, bring it to light," Matthews said. "What has come out of this, or is starting to come out of this, is closer scrutiny of this public entity. And that is always a good thing."

The report was the result of months of work by Arizona-based investigative reporter John Dougherty, whom NPRI hired to conduct the research.

It turned up suggestions of an overly cozy relationship between the authority and R&R Partners, the advertising agency behind the "What happens here, stays here" ads. The longtime relationship between R&R and the authority has been the vehicle for $399 million in spending by the authority, which has a fiscal year budget of about $294 million, most of which comes from hotel room taxes in Las Vegas.

Some of the evidence in the report was dated and had already been caught by authority auditors or reported in the local media, leading to counter-allegations the entire effort was an exercise to discredit the authority and weaken its influence.

NPRI board member Bill Weidner of Las Vegas Sands and his day-job boss, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, have contributed to other efforts to weaken the authority. Adelson and Weidner consider the publicly funded Las Vegas Convention Center to be an unfair competitor to their company's privately-run Sands Expo Center.

Still, the NPRI effort also highlighted a decision by authority president and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter to make a $25,000 donation to a Denver-based hospital that later honored him with a banquet. After the spending was brought to light, authority board members discussed the possibility of guidelines to ensure future charitable donations are more closely aligned with its mission to attract tourists and conventions to Clark County.

Links to the NPRI report and a 12-page rebuttal by the authority can be found here: http://www.lvrj.com/business/35855679.html.