Watch them fall for it again

"Las Vegas will soon start being paid the more than $11 million it is owed for acquiring land for the Fremont Street Experience’s parking garage," read the Nov. 30 Review-Journal news flash. "It took almost two decades since the acquisition for the city to figure out the bill. And it will take almost three more decades for the city to get paid in full."

Really? That's the land that was seized from Carol Pappas and her family -- driving several going concerns out of business, downtown -- for the "public use" of being transferred to the greedy downtown casino barons, so they could build a parking garage that sat nearly empty for years, on a piece of land where some newcomer might otherwise have come in and built a competing casino.

Mrs. Pappas, whose son Harry says her health was never the same after the property seizure, died a few weeks ago.

Anybody want to bet that within less than one short decade, at least half this bill will be "forgiven" for these "good corporate citizens" by a tag-team of lame duck City Council members with their eyes on some lucrative part-time retirement gigs — just as the City Council has done with other properties downtown, in violation of deals initially sold as "protecting the public's interest"?

After all, the debt is only owed to Las Vegas taxpayers; what can they do about it?

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