Vegas Law Talk

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:24
Good morning. This is Vegas law talk. This is your host Leslie Stovall. I hope everybody's having a good morning, Commissioner Richard Seager Blum is my guest today, and it's a real pleasure to have you. You're visiting with me, tick. I've known you for many, many years. Yeah, I hate to think I started think back when we first were doing it. But we were doing employment law back before there was employment law we were. That's about right. That's about right. Before there was it's been a while, how you doing? Doing fine. The last couple of years, I've been something I'd never dreamed of. happening that never even occurred to me, that could be a pandemic United States. And then to think that somehow or other vaccines would become so evil. And we all had the kind of Commissioner that they people were coming protesting that were in a mask, and they were screaming. Anyway, so we've been through amazing things, but we're coming out the end. And so I'm just real happy. You know, it is wonderful to be able to get back together with folks that you know, and to visit.

Unknown Speaker 1:27
It is it's it's makes you feel very optimistic, doesn't it? It really does. And really just love people. I've never actually seen their face. So actually, you see people Oh, that's who that is.

Unknown Speaker 1:39
Yeah, that's right after the last couple of years, right.

Unknown Speaker 1:43
So,

Unknown Speaker 1:44
and I'm with you, I don't know why anyone could object or would resist vaccines when there was such a high fatality rate with persons who were not being vaccinated.

Unknown Speaker 1:58
I don't get it. But I guess that's a, I guess it's important for some people, I just wonder what the thinking is when you run the risk of hurting somebody else? Or you

Unknown Speaker 2:14
don't take care of yourself, and then somebody the community has to cover your cost of care? You know, exactly. I mean, I just don't haven't grown up. When vaccines just something automatically, you got never question that it's Hello. And then all of a sudden this comes? Well, when we were kids, I mean, polio. Right? Right. Polio was a real threat. I knew and I'm sure you knew people who actually suffered polio, and crippled from the results of that disease and ever, you'd go down and get your either your sugar pill,

Unknown Speaker 2:46
and, or CUBA SUGAR with your vaccine in it. And that was your polio and all the other things that kids are required to do. And no one questioned it was like, this is science, you know, we're a science leaving country.

Unknown Speaker 3:01
It just thought that people would question science at this point. After all we've been through, it's just just I honestly don't understand, but because you said, that's, that's people are there. So it's we have to deal with and what a miracle to be able to ramp up vaccines as quickly as

Unknown Speaker 3:19
we were able to do it. I mean, it's amazing that science could develop a effective vaccines in such a short time, and then eventually get the good distribution of those drugs. You know, exactly. I mean, two years ago, we were like, Oh, my God, what's gonna happen? And then the literally just a little over a year ago, the vaccines came out, and then we're off to the races. So it's just, it really shows science works. But the other hand, there's always somebody's gonna say, Well, I don't believe it. Yeah, for whatever reason.

Unknown Speaker 3:51
I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 3:53
Tick you. I don't think a lot of listeners really know what commission districts are or what the boundaries of the district, would you tell our listeners, what District you represent and what your boundaries are? Sure. So there's seven of us as each one has about three handle over 300,000 people in them. And my basic boundaries are, I'm south of Charleston, north of Flamingo and I go from say, Decatur to sunrise mountain. Okay, so it's their huge geographic areas. And I have the northern part of the strip, which is fantastic. But I also have some really cool areas under sunrise mountain that is a very poor area, a lot of Boulder highway. So I just have a real diverse area. But the fun part is it's it's mostly unincorporated. So I'm the mayor. I'm the city councilors. I'm the garbage collector. I do it all.

Unknown Speaker 4:44
What kind of things have you found? Now you're

Unknown Speaker 4:49
staying standing for reelection? This time is actually a file for office this morning. Oh, well, congratulations. I'm glad you did. It's wonderful. I've I'm sure you'll be reelected. I think you've been

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Well, not only do I know you and think highly of you, but I know that you've done good work at the commission. And in all your public offices, you're, you have a wonderful reputation. What are some of the things that you look forward to doing in the future as a commissioner? Well, you know, the first year I was there,

Unknown Speaker 5:20
I started all kinds of ideas. And I was very proactive and thought of new great things to do. And then COVID hit and so we just kind of everything got pushed aside now, which I do we just figure out a way to keep people from getting evicted, getting their shots, getting sick, get the strip back open. So we we really busted our butt. And really, government did a fantastic job. I mean, no one's perfect. You look back and say, why'd you do this? Why do that, but we were just trying to do the best we could to that idea we'd ever even dreamed up. So but but that now is is coming to an end. While I was going on, we did a lot of stuff as far as roads and things. But now my big thing is to really focus on housing. And not necessarily the same breath. But But homeless, although they're really tied together, because, as you see, the price of housing is going up and it's going up dramatically, then everybody seems to push down one level. So if you're in 1000, our apartment today, that square 1500 miles, you have to go down and find a smaller with 1000, then when you do that, then that pushes somebody out the bottom. So you know, there's just a lot of people on the edge right now. And we have to figure out a way to to keep them from becoming homeless, which is really scary. Well, homelessness is horrible. I can't imagine. And I don't think most people who are insensitive to this.

Unknown Speaker 6:41
Realize how terrible of a situation that is.

Unknown Speaker 6:47
You know, and you think of families being homeless? I don't know. It's, it's tragic. What are you what are your thoughts with addressing homelessness or affordable housing, I suppose what you're really talking about. Now, well, there's there's a couple of components. But affordable housing is just, it's just gonna be something where we have to just build more units, we figure they're 70,000 units short, and Las Vegas, or Clark County. So we just had to figure out a way to, to expedite that process and build them up we have, we have bonds, we have federal money, we have lots of ways to do it. But the process takes several years. So we do in the meantime. But but we're working on that part of it. But the other thing is, let's figure out a way to keep people in the office. So if you if you're on a fixed income, say give 1000 hours a month.

Unknown Speaker 7:36
And there's a lot of people out there. So security, I'm getting 3000 a month, or whatever, it's 2500. But a lot of people are only getting 1000, putting their rent goes up $200, that's just the gap, they can't just immediately. So we're looking at programs just to pay that extra 200. If we can just say,

Unknown Speaker 7:54
you know, we'll pay you this landlord, you kept your thing, and we'll be an extra 200 and get through a couple of years. And then we figure out what's going to happen. But

Unknown Speaker 8:03
But then the other thing about homeless is a lot of them. It's people who have mental issues of drug abuse problems, all kinds of things, lots of veterans even that are out there system, just amazing. But so we're trying to figure out a way to both find different we have median housing that problems in me housing problems and long term problems, but nothing is just getting them in the door. Rather than go out there. They're squatting on somebody's property that was trespassing, getting arrested, which doesn't do anybody good. Let's find a what we call a navigation center where we can take them, figure out what their problem is, if there's a drug problem, or a mental health problem, or whatever, we'll try to deal with that there with social workers and doctors and everything. And then move them into some type of temporary housing and then just move up the ladder, but get them get break the cycle of just going to jail code out of jail break, which is just amazing. There was one person I forget how many times he had been arrested. But like 50 Times in, in like a year period. The cost of jail is over trillion dollars today. It's just It's insane. We can just buy him an apartment, just put him in there and save a ton of money. So just things like that where you have to be creative. But truthfully, we look around the country, no one's really found a good solution. So we're all trying to do something. Do you think the county will come to the point where it would subsidize housing so that we're you seeing these these huge increases in rent and and people competing having to compete to find a place

Unknown Speaker 9:39
by spending more money for rent than you would ordinarily expect? Do you think that's something that county is going to do? I'm pretty confident we're going to have to the right now is basically if you're being evicted, we will step in and verge of being evicted the web, we can actually pay back your rent that you owed and stuff like that, but you don't want people to get to that point and then when they get to that point you

Unknown Speaker 10:00
They owe several $1,000. So that's not really helping me buy. Whereas if we could just step in and just say, here's 200 ollars a month, and make a deal with the landlord, prevent that, that fear of being evicted, one of the things going on nationally that I'm actually looking at, like, take some of the support, but there's these programs where people were just given 500 hours or 1000 hours a month. And they look at the results. And it seems to be very positive that the stress level is down that for the family, for the kids, I mean, everybody just able to go on with their life, but just knowing there's that check coming in every month for sure. I just really changes their psychological outlook, which enables them to, to do whatever I've read about that program. And in fact,

Unknown Speaker 10:46
there was one of the writers who, I don't know, if they evaluated or were involved in the program, where they're just reporting on the program said that there had been this criticism, well, you just can't give money to some disadvantaged person, because they'll just blow it, you know. And they were reporting that, in fact, people are pretty responsible, that they really do take care of their families, and they really treat that money in a responsible way. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 11:12
That Republican talking place all this goes out and buy drugs. And yeah, and the reality is, when they looked at these programs, they actually work in the Senate. So that's that whole, that's that old thing about blaming the victim right? From back in the Reagan era, right? Now, it's even worse. So the senator from from not to digress, but senator from Florida, Scott just came out with his proposal is everybody has to pay income tax, and we're gonna get rid of Social Security, we're gonna get rid of all these programs. And it's like, What world are we living in, when the rich have gotten so rich, and then the last couple of years, especially, let's just start to take that back, and then spread it around and just make sure that there's a floor under which nobody has to fall? I've never understood this idea that people who who are at a disadvantage should be punished? I don't understand that idea. Why is it that you would do that to another human being? And and if you want to talk about economics, why would you impose that cost on your community, you know, like public housing, or subsidized housing, or providing adequate funds to be able to feed your children, or health insurance, because the cost of not providing those things cause such extraordinary cost down the road? Exactly. Pennywise, and pound foolish because when you don't, when people are afraid to go to the doctor, because they don't have guaranteed health care, then they wait till it's too long. And then then we're off to the races, and they're gonna end up with UMC or some hospital where we pay for it anyway. And then they're gonna die their families loose, they don't have that income support, just like we're deporting people, some guy gets, he's undocumented, he's here with his family, he gets a DUI or something, they just deport them. So then that takes away the breadwinner from the the family, then the kids getting separated from the mother. And then it's just it's just just insanity. Just you couldn't design a stupid or system that we use. Well, and it's true. And I the the ACA or healthcare seems to be just a real simple way of looking at it. If you're not insuring people where they're going to go, who's going to pay for their critical care, when they become really ill, it's going to be more expensive taking care of them because the illness is progressed. They haven't had primary care. And who pays for it? It's the community. And who benefits from that? Well, the community doesn't our community doesn't because we end up having to pay for it. You know, eventually. No, absolutely. So why not insurance? It makes no sense to me Medicare for all, it's just it's such a simple concept. Every other country could do it. Canada can do it. I mean, Canada's just like, literally, you can walk across a line and everybody there has health insurance, walked back United States and people are running around trying to have these medical bills, then they're having to file bankruptcy. Well, what do they do? They go down to the emergency room, right? And where do they go, they go to UNC UMC the county hospital or they go to some other hospital. And all that does is burden the private hospital with costs that they shouldn't be burdened with in the first place? And what about rural Nevada, rural Nevada historically has had trouble getting medical care and provide medical services to people living out in the rules because lack of insurance or you know that you look at Tonopah, their community hospital, right.

Unknown Speaker 14:35
I mean, it's gone into bankruptcy in the past because nobody had insurance up there to pay for the services that they critically needed. And then if you went in and actually saw how people vote, I'm sure 90% of people in Tonopah voted for Trump.

Unknown Speaker 14:48
Well, that's the other side of it. You know, we're by God, we're individuals. I'd rather die from an illness you know, and have you paid for it?

Unknown Speaker 14:58
I just like the vaccine I'd rather die.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
didn't take the vaccine. But yet when I get the COVID I'm the first one in the hospital and I'm not

Unknown Speaker 15:05
somebody else is gonna have to pay for it. Yeah, well, it doesn't make sense. I don't, I don't get it.

Unknown Speaker 15:12
Hopefully those things will change, though at least we have the ACA, at least our state has accepted the Medicaid. To his credit, Brian Sandoval, a Republican governor just said, Yes, we're going to do that, and that there's hundreds of 1000s of people that are on Medicaid right now because of that. And then we have the Affordable Care Act, too, which is about 100,000 people, but it's, so we're one of the top states as far as that goes. And it's really benefited. The state financially hasn't Absolutely. Our rates, we pay the poor doctors are so low that we need to raise those but but the truth is, no one goes, and if you go into UMC, they will sign you up for Medicaid right then. So there is a financial aid coming from the federal government. But you still be afraid to go to a doctor to start with. Yeah, that's right. And, and people wait until they get very sick. So

Unknown Speaker 16:03
the

Unknown Speaker 16:05
mental health seems to be to be one of the areas that Clark County could really improve services on.

Unknown Speaker 16:15
My dear friend who's passed away Norton Reutemann.

Unknown Speaker 16:19
And I had many conversations about the lack of adequate mental health services. He was one of the few psychiatrists in Las Vegas. Yeah. Oh, and he was, I remember when he came, he was the first board certified pediatric psychiatrist that came in, and he worked with a lot of children groups

Unknown Speaker 16:40
on that issue, but it still doesn't seem adequate. When you have people who need services, has the county addressed that in any way? Well, we again, we have social services, we can provide some of that, but it's not nearly enough. And, and you can't just go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist and get treatment, you have to then qualify for Medicaid. And then if you're undocumented, those services aren't available with and we have a huge undocumented population in Las Vegas that are that are out doing the work that we wanted to do. I mean, this to me, John, right, this is to dry up in a second without the undocumented population. But, you know, it's, again, one of those things where we can do better, but we are. And that's the one thing that I didn't appreciate with the county is the county provides all that cities don't do any of the social services. And so, so we are doing that, and the medical school now is starting to step up. So there are things happening, but it's, we can always do better. So well, it just seems like and this just from my perspective, I don't know if anyone shares this yet. But it just seems like mental health has been criminalized what happens, and you know, in our neighborhood, you see people, because of I think UMC is their facility for health care and mental health,

Unknown Speaker 17:58
the acute mental problems, you see folks that are obviously mentally ill, and I see them, it seems like they're being arrested, and that our system criminalizes the mentally ill when what they really need is mental health intervention and care. And, for example, so you're out there, you have a prescription, whether you're taking them out, but you're homeless, you get arrested, if you go to the jail, the jail cuts off all of those drugs. At some point, when you're in the jail, they reevaluate you, then they give you a new prescription, but then you leave the jail, we don't give you a prescription when you leave the jail. So then we then you're back in social services trying to deal with, so that was probably to create social worker teams within the jail. So when you're when you come in, we find out what you're on and make sure you stay on that while you're in there. When you come back out, we make sure that you're back in the system. So there's you never lose your medication, or you never lose your doctor, because that that just was another stupid thing we do. But that's just jail was some kind of off limits. So we went once we took him to jail, we lost you. But it's, you know that. And then you have and you'll see this all the time, there's a homeless person who just finally exhaust from heat or whatever. So they collapse, who shows up the fire department and then the private, medical, private, private ambulances? What do they do that that's $1,000, they take you to the UMC or to some emergency room, that's the 5000 or whatever, when in fact, if we just had social workers who could come deal with the problem, take you to an intermediate care, some type of facility where you can, we could just we get you back on your meds. Yeah, with medication rehydrate you just

Unknown Speaker 19:44
again, you couldn't design a stupid or system and the way we do Medicare and medicine, and how we treat people that don't have insurance. Yeah, yeah. And and it would seem to me that if you had better mental health intervention and mental health

Unknown Speaker 20:00
services, you know, that followed individuals, you would reduce criminalization or incarceration, God reduce all the problems that go along with folks that have that in place to be more humane. I mean, it's just horrible. It's horrible. And just just to take it a little further. So one of the things I'm also working on is, we have a rendus.

Unknown Speaker 20:26
Opioid addiction, but more importantly, overdose problem, more people 1000s of people are dying. So around the country, and hopefully we can bring it here is we're trying to have a place where if you have opioid, some type of opioid, you can bring it into the center. There'll be doctors and nurses and people there. And so if you inject, and something happens, there's somebody who can treat you right then. So yet, we don't give you the drug, you have to find the drug somewhere else, but at least you can go in there and get treatment, if something happens. And then if you're there, hopefully we can then say, what can we help you with this will help you that because just the people and you and I both though, you know, family members, or people close friends who've had these opioid problems, they had a surgery, something that happened, they get addicted, they spend their whole life, everything they own, they mortgage their house, trying to get these people back into rehab. And the truth is lapo just don't don't rehab that well. So that's just because of, again, it's just stupid. And and I

Unknown Speaker 21:29
have wondered about the adequacy of the settlements that have been negotiated.

Unknown Speaker 21:36
With the pharmacy companies that have promoted, the use of opioids and opioids

Unknown Speaker 21:45
were well known to cause death, and particularly when they start mixing them with benzos as the pens that Xanax you know, in, in fact, the FDA came out, I'm trying to think how many years ago it was five, six years ago, where they actually black labeled that combination of drugs because it cause

Unknown Speaker 22:06
respiratory arrest, people just keel over. And when it would have stopped breathing, that one family, the Sackler family, which is Purdue pharmacy, basically invented

Unknown Speaker 22:18
opioids as far as taking the pills, and they're going to give us 60 billion or whatever it's going to be, but but it was part of the settlement. They were agreeing we're not going to prosecute them, even though there's emails showing that they knew exactly what they were doing and addicting this huge number of people and hiring people to go out and promote it and entice doctors to prescribe. You know, if there was some kid out here on the corner selling heroin and killed somebody from the sale of that drug, they would have come up for murder. Why? Why would you treat somebody who owns a pharmacy company different? Yeah, especially when they've killed as many as they killed millions of people.

Unknown Speaker 22:57
I don't get it. I don't get it. You know, it's kind of like, the oligarchs in England, right? They've owned soccer clubs, and they're they are killing everybody in Ukraine, but they don't want to take the soccer club away from the guy gonna let him sell it. Yeah. Does that make sense? I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 23:13
There's lots of injustice. So we can't live yet. We got lots of work to do you just keep working on it. Isn't that right? Exactly. Yeah, that's what so much fun. I mean, that enjoy pain. But the fact is, there's so much to do, and Las Vegas, particularly, so much to do, but also Vegas is small enough that you can actually see a little bit here and there and, and say, Well, you know, but for me, that wouldn't have happened. It's very fun. You know, you and I were talking about education the other day when we were talking about having you on the show. I know, your mother was a educator, my family, we're all educators. It's a wonderful profession. But I sometimes well, I have for a long time felt that educators simply aren't compensated adequately. And there's not enough money in the education system today to

Unknown Speaker 24:01
teach our children. And the result the the evaluation of our system seems to indicate that too. So absolutely. And the reality is the teachers that we grew up with, they don't exist anymore. They now you have to be all things. I mean, due to family to both parents working and all the problems that go along with that. The teacher is as much a disciplinarian and a social worker. And so it's just we and then we have all these tests they have to give and all this homework that they have to take home and graded. And it's just the teaching profession is just as killer profession and we pay him nothing. Peanuts. Oh, it's just how do you how are we tracking my education? I have no idea. Well,

Unknown Speaker 24:43
most of the teachers I've ever known are so dedicated. They're committed to their their profession, the education of young young people and and they're wonderful. I don't know how

Unknown Speaker 25:00
but they do it on a day to day basis. To tell you the truth. I think it's a wonderful thing. But, you know, Nevada continues to be

Unknown Speaker 25:08
poorly ranked as far as education.

Unknown Speaker 25:11
You had said, you had mentioned that you thought the change in the tax base that occurred many years ago was one of the primary causes for the change in education here in Nevada. Yeah, we were always tied to the property tax. And then around 1980, they changed like proposition 30, in California, or what we call it here, but we changed the formula. And so our property tax is so low, that we've had to subsidize it with gaming taxes and sales taxes. And, and unfortunately, those go up and down. So every time we look like we're just coming out of the woods, that we can start to increase things, then the recession hits or pandemic hits, or, you know, who knows what it is, but there's always seems like every five years, we're just we're really just like, oh, I can see the promised land. Bam. So if that happens, and we're back in the hall, that was one of the goals that you had in mind with the legalization of marijuana was to provide a an additional funding base for education was in Ireland. Yeah. And TUIfly. It Bay's more, there's more money from for education from from marijuana, there's Malko, where it's over $100 million a year. But the fact is, is still just a drop in the bucket. But it's, it's amazing. Just can you think of that just create a tax, which we have never done in Nevada, to grade $100 million. This is this was a huge decision. So I'm very proud of the day what other funding sources do you see for education here in Nevada, other than the marijuana? Well, I would like to see alcohol. When we passed our marijuana thing, it was like treat marijuana like alcohol. Now my motto is, Mantra is treat the alcohol like marijuana. Sure. So let's let's let's start to raise those taxes. I mean, we, you know, alcohol is your taxes based on the amount of alcohol, but as opposed to the so $100 bottle of wine, it pays the same taxes at $3. Oh, yeah. So it's just crazy. So let's start to treat the owe tax. The bottom line based on this, the sale of it made this a sales tax component for both marijuana but but its actual tax, it's minimal. And there's no reason we couldn't put some kind of just a one word two or 3% tax on an alcohol on the sales price. In addition to pay for something, you know, I thought, well, let's let's do something comparable to marijuana. So I said, Well, what, how much alcohol do we sell? Well, we don't know. We don't, even though it has to be a lot of these casinos. Right. But but I'm just saying, The Smith, I'm sure in their cash register, they have something that says this, we just sold alcohol for that six pack for $10. But the state doesn't even know what that is. I didn't know that. I'm surprised that I was shocked. It's like a low house, but wasn't gonna things Nevada, we are so backward.

Unknown Speaker 28:01
just drives you crazy. But again, that's where we have the opportunity to come together and change things but but it just just boggles the mind that we wouldn't even know just the total amount of

Unknown Speaker 28:13
alcohol sales, by county, by beer, by wine by anything. Just bizarre. That's shocking. And that's another story. Maybe someday you and I can get on and talk about how our businesses tend to use government to shift their cost of doing business off to taxpayers rather than rather than them paying their fair share. You know, we have a room tax of 15%, which is there's a ton of money, but by law, the tax stays on the strip. So they have to use that money to rebuild the roads coming in.

Unknown Speaker 28:46
Just every other city would have room tax that would debate for the opera for this cultural event for whatever hasn't gotten that in Nevada. So it's in the hotel sphere a long time ago. If we can

Unknown Speaker 28:58
control the system, then then whatever taxes we use, we just use it to benefit ourselves, which again, it's not the Roth short term, but ultimately, let's spread the wealth out and just make sure that everybody benefits not just a few

Unknown Speaker 29:13
out of state landlords. Yeah, yeah, like better education. So ask me that after November, after I'm reluctant. You're you will be i no doubt in my mind. And, and I want to thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule. And it's wonderful seeing you again. I haven't seen you enough. Exactly. So we're both alive. So every day it's a blessing, isn't it? Absolutely. Well, thank you very much.

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