LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – A dispute over $9.8 million of discretionary funds pits an incoming Clark County Commissioner against her predecessor, who gave the money to yet a third commissioner for a pet redevelopment project, the 8 News Now Investigators have learned.
Shortly into District C commissioner April Becker’s first term, she discovered that Ross Miller, the former commissioner for District C, gave the entire allotment to help redevelop Commercial Center in Las Vegas. Commercial Center, the enormous outdoor shopping area famous in the 1960s for its many local stores and businesses, popular restaurants and celebrity patronage. Commercial Center is in District E’s redevelopment district, the area represented by Clark County Commission Chairman Tick Segerblom.
“They wiped the whole fund out,” Becker told the 8 News Now Investigators.
Miller does not disagree, and contends that he diverted the funds to Segerblom after years of planning and with the end goal of redeveloping an area critical to the region’s success as a world-class American city.
“We’re no longer in our infancy as a community in Las Vegas,” Miller said in an interview conducted at the Composers Room, a restaurant and stage in the space where the Rat Pack would eat when it was a local deli. “We’re in our adolescence. So do we want to become Chicago, or Detroit?”
Miller said he spent his one and only four-year term as county commissioner “working with stakeholders constituents following the reports that have existed for 20 years as to how to spend this money so that we can create catalytic projects that will reinvigorate this area and result in a creative arts district for Las Vegas.”
Segerblom, when confronted with Becker’s efforts to be made whole and her argument that she and her District C constituents deserve to spend that money in their territory, found $2 million to give back to her.
Asked whether that was an indication Becker had a valid point with regard to the $9.8 million, Segerblom said, “No. I honestly felt bad that she wanted to have some money. You know, I’m the chairman of the commission, so I just felt this was a good thing to do.”
But Becker, in her interview with the 8 News Now Investigators earlier this year, said, “Yes, I do want my money.”
Miller, unmoved by Becker’s argument that the money – from District C’s discretionary parks account – was misspent.
“The idea that somehow you would walk into an office and based off of a previous budget, just inherit $10 million and go spend it without any planning – that’s scary,” Miller said. “What she’s proposing is actually a little alarming. Shouldn’t you have to go and meet with stakeholders and review plans and engage in a planning process so that we know that we’re spending your taxpayer dollars effectively and efficiently?”
Becker said even if Miller’s depletion of the funds was nothing nefarious – as Segerblom insisted – she has a problem with a process that allows for the significant allocation of money outside of a commissioner’s district.
“It’s wrong,” Becker said. “So if nothing else comes from this, let’s fix that because I don’t mind having checks and balances on myself. I put them on there because what I’m going to do, I will be accountable for.”
Each district was originally given $14 million for this discretionary account from the general fund, according to records obtained by the 8 News Now Investigators. Each district was then forced to part with approximately $4 million in order to help pay for an $80 million lawsuit settlement with regard to a development project on Blue Diamond Hill.
Another commissioner, District F’s Justin Jones, deleted text messages critical to the litigation, and that brought each district’s haul from the discretionary dispensation to $9.8 million. The state bar unsuccessfully attempted to revoke Jones’ law license.
