Smuggling special-interest items into Nevada law appears to be Whittemore’s main stock in trade—usually deployed in behalf of the interests that hire him. In the 1997 session of the legislature Harvey produced a stunner that yielded two years worth of national bad press for the state of Nevada [see "Limousines Lumps," Nevada Journal, February]. Tacitly mocking the ideas behind a bill dedicated to competition and intended to deregulate public power, Whittemore got the okay from Senate Commerce and Labor Chairman Randolph Townsend to slip into that legislation a provision radically intensifying the ferocity of the state’s anachronistic limousine regulatory regime. The clear intent—successfully pursued over the last two years—was to help established members of the legally favored Vegas limo cartel to utilize state regulators against small entrepreneurs seeking to enter the same business.

The resulting chorus of national condemnation—ranging from Investor’s Business Daily to the Wall Street Journal, and from Reader’s Digest to national columnist George Will—did not go unnoticed in this year’s legislature. Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Bill O’Donnell recognized on the public record the "black eye" that Nevada had given itself. Then he and his Senate colleagues immediately proceeded to give the state another shiner. Once again—surprise, surprise—they were following the guidance of Harvey Whittemore.

Remember Nipper, the RCA Victor terrier? In ad after ad throughout most of this century, Nipper has sat there, his head cocked, listening to the Victrola from whence came, according to the ad caption, "His Master’s Voice."

Nevada legislators increasingly act like Nipper, transfixed by whatever bad judgment or ethically impaired message happens to be emerging from Whittemore’s mouth. Indeed, emulating Nipper further, O’Donnell and his committee virtually roll over on their backs whenever Whittemore enters the room.

An amazing case in point is the committee’s April 9th meeting, which followed three weeks of meetings and work sessions between the committee and various attorneys, including those representing small independent limousine operators.

"[O’Donnell] and his committee members were speaking like they were interested in doing something for independents and opening up the market," says Rich Lowre, president of the Independent Limousine Owner/Operators Association. He notes that on the evening of the 8th, the chairman and his colleagues had expressed support for opening the market.

"‘We don’t want a ‘floodgate approach,’" Lowre quotes O’Donnell as saying, "‘but we want to make it a little easier for people to get in, and we need to do something about the intervention process. We can’t have competing companies challenging licenses.’" At that, he says, each member of the panel solemnly nodded.

The next day, however, Whittemore showed up and gave the committee his instructions.

"It was very surprising," says another independent driver, Ed Wheeler. "Ten minutes before the vote he comes in and says, ‘We don’t like this. Refer it to Finance.’ And that’s what they did—completely against what we felt the tide [had been]."

The Las Vegas Sun reports O’Donnell told longtime capitol correspondent Cy Ryan that the current regulatory regime was not fair to "the little guy." But away from the media spotlight, say sources close to the negotiations, the committee chairman was actually unwilling to even consider any substantive change to the current bad law. The one amendment O’Donnell proposed—a change in limo license application procedures to say current members of the existing cartel bore the burden of showing a new license would harm the whole industry—was hastily withdrawn as soon as Whittemore announced that he objected.

After three weeks of work sessions with representatives of the small limousine operators, O’Donnell declined to accept or discuss—much less allow his committee to vote on—amendments to open the market to competition, regardless of the provisions that had been offered to insure protection for the riding public. Further, in discussions, the Senate Transportation Committee leadership explicitly endorsed a system where the State of Nevada abandons its fundamental responsibility to insure fair and constitutional enforcement of law. Pleading lack of money, committee members found nothing problematic about the concept of the state turning over large chunks of its regulatory responsibility to people employed by the existing limousine oligopoly.

Apologists for the limo cartel’s stranglehold on Nevada’s regulatory regime argue that the current system insures that tourists visiting Las Vegas have a "good experience" when they lease a limousine. In truth, the artificial shortage that the cartel enforces with state government connivance is a notorious source of visitor dissatisfaction. The results of Nevada’s oligopoly-run taxi-limousine regime has become a widely recognized problem for Vegas-visiting business executives, and thus one more way for the oligopoly’s dominance to again damage the state’s economic future.