City employees piling up cell phone bills

LAS VEGAS - City employees are racking up thousands of hours on cell phones to conduct business as well as personal calls, the Las Vegas Sun reported on Monday.

Records show the city spent $61,250 paying for calls made by 365 of its employees in the first six months of 2000.

That number does not include the cost of the phones, the service contract, or the amount spent by emergency and code enforcement personnel for a separate two-way radio pager system with phone capabilities. The total amount tops $300,000 annually, the records revealed.

Some employees freely used their phones for long-distance calls, and many get billed for calling toll-free numbers, checking voice mail and accessing time and temperature, according to the records.

City records show a huge disparity in phone use, from 11 cents charged by Mayor Oscar Goodman to more than $1,000 for a Public Works employee.

But the most unusual facet of the 1,200 pages of records is the secrecy granted Goodman's executive assistant, William Cassidy.

Cassidy, who worked as a private investigator for the defense team in the Ted Binion murder trial, took a leave of his city position when the trial began.

He did not, however, leave the city cell phone behind, according to the dates and times of his phone use. Cassidy's bill for the period from January to June is the highest citywide at $1,686.

The records were not made public by the city until after certain numbers were removed from Cassidy's records.

''We talked with the city attorney's office, and they said that as long as the bill was paid by the employee and that releasing the number would be detrimental to someone's safety, it is OK to block them out,'' said David Riggleman, the city's communication manager.

Cassidy said he has paid for all of his cell phone calls not just the personal ones ''out of an abundance of caution.''

Cassidy would not comment on the nature of his calls to the blocked-out numbers, but he would not deny they were related to the Binion case.

As new defense lawyers for Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy try to win the convicted killers a new trial, Cassidy's connections to the first trial will be the focus of an upcoming court hearing alleging that he meddled in the original case.