LVCVA misused cards

Tourism boss used $17,000 worth for personal travel on Southwest

Longtime tourism boss Rossi Ralenkotter used $17,152 in airline gift cards given to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for personal travel for himself and his family, an audit showed Wednesday.

The benefits were detailed in a report ordered by audit committee chairman Bill Noonan in February 2017, weeks after the Las Vegas Review-journal requested employee gift and travel records from the publicly funded agency. The convention authority did not provide the records.

Auditors also found that board chairman Lawrence Weekly used $699 in airline gift cards for a trip with his daughter.

The agency did not track the use of the gift cards, which were provided by Southwest Airlines from 2012 to 2017.

“Your personal use of those rewards was highly inappropriate and we would have expected you to use better judgment,” Noonan told Ralenkotter at an audit committee meeting on Wednesday.

Ralenkotter, the publicly funded agency’s CEO, apologized at the meeting for his actions and accepted “full responsibility.” He has already paid back the money to the convention authority and prohibited employees from

LVCVA

using the cards for personal trips.

“I should have shown better judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Ralenkotter told the committee. “I hope you know me well enough now to know my love for this authority, this industry and this city and to know that I would never intentionally do anything to tarnish or embarrass this great organization.”

Ralenkotter earned nearly $900,000 last year in salary, bonus and benefits, according to government watchdog group Transparent Nevada.

Weekly, a member of the audit committee, also took responsibility for his actions. He did not disclose the travel cards in his campaign finance reports. State law requires elected officials to report gifts worth more than $200.

In July 2016, Weekly said, he asked Brig Lawson, the agency’s director of business partnerships, for help in finding cheaper airline tickets for a trip to Texas on authority business. Weekly said he also took his daughter Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Rossi Ralenkotter spent more than $17,000 in Southwest Airlines gift cards for personal travel that the airline provided the agency. That was on top of the compensation and perks detailed below that he received in 2016.

Total compensation in 2016: $768,130