An Interview with Bruce L. Woodbury

AN INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE L. WOODBURY

An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans

The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project

Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas

©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016

Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans

The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to

work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The

participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the

opportunity to flourish.

The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false

starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All

measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases

photographic sources accompany the individual interviews.

The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of

the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project.

Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas

iii

PREFACE

Personal collection of Rose and Bruce Woodbury

"Should I be congratulated for the basic minimum that you should expect from any public servant—not taking bribes, being honest?"

As Bruce Woodbury reflects on his twenty-eight years as Clark County's longest-serving County commissioner (1981–2009) he recalls serving with about thirty different commissioners. Surprisingly, "only seven of us got major jail sentences." He ruminates how Federal Bureau of Investigation probes Operation Yobo in the early 1980s and G Sting in the early 2000s exposed several Clark County politicians who succumbed to greed. While Woodbury considers honesty in office a given, his values were not held by all of his colleagues. One Operation Yobo recording caught a fellow commissioner responding to the query, "How about Woodbury?" with, "No, you can't touch him with a ten foot pole." Woodbury remembers his "campaign guys really liked that." Apparently the voters did as well, as he consistently won re-election.

The Las Vegas native, who was raised in the John S. Park neighborhood and attended Las Vegas schools, earned his Bachelor's degree at the University of Utah and his Juris Doctorate at Stanford University. He had the good fortune of forming and joining law firms with good friends; he has been with only two firms in his career, joining his current firm in 1984. He speaks of the progressive hearing impairment that eventually kept him out of the courtroom professionally and of the cochlear implants that allowed his brain to learn a new way of hearing.

In this interview Woodbury puts his county commission service into historical perspective and into the Building Las Vegas initiative by highlighting his four priorities while in office— transportation, flood control, clean air, and planning and zoning—and the ways he was able to establish infrastructure to mitigate problems in these areas.

He points to transportation accomplishments such as the CC-215 Bruce Woodbury Beltway, the Desert Inn Super Arterial, and the Monorail. He pushed the 1985 Flood Control District legislation and served as the District's first chairman. His service on the Environmental Quality Advisory Committee gave him a platform to combat Clark County smog by creating the Clean Air Action Plan. His effort to require a super majority on the commission to overrule the master plan was struck down by the Nevada Supreme Court as unauthorized by state law; however, he became known for his commitment to compatibility with existing neighborhoods and for working with town advisory boards and citizen groups.

In 1980, when Clark County commissioner Bob Broadbent resigned to take a position with the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, he created a vacancy to be filled by gubernatorial appointment. Broadbent recommended Woodbury to Governor Robert List, who then appointed the young attorney. Broadbent and List each have their own lists of accomplishments. To their lists we can add Woodbury's 1981 appointment to the Clark County commission—Clark County residents have benefited greatly from Woodbury's twenty-eight years in that position.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Bruce L. Woodbury September 29, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans

Preface………………………………………………………………………………..…………..iv Childhood in John S. Park neighborhood, marriage at nineteen, University of Utah, 1966 B.S., magna cum laude; and Stanford University 1969 J.D. One-year clerkship Judge Howard Babcock; 1971 law practice with Jim Rogers, Tom Lea, and Doug Whitney and later Earl Monsey. 1984 joined law firm of boyhood friends and current partners R. Gardner Jolley and William R. Urga. Bob Broadbent, Robert List, Clark County Commission 1981–2009. Transportation, flood control, air quality, and planning and zoning. Environmental Quality Advisory Committee and Clean Air Action Plan. Early 1980s floods, 1985 Flood Control District legislation, and first chairman. 1989 proposed master transportation plan for beltway, improved roads, and transit system; legislature passing tax package on gasoline, sales, hotel/motel rooms, developers, and motor vehicles ………………………………………………………………………………….….…………. 1–10

Maryland Parkway corridor transit; Las Vegas Monorail and Chapter 11 bankruptcy, three convention centers, and McCarran International Airport; logistics, locations for elevated pedestrian crossings; competition and ego; progressive hearing loss, hearing aids, and cochlear implants; CC-215 Bruce Woodbury Beltway and construction, local money, and attractive interchanges. Clark County commission, compatible zoning, and developers Richard Plaster, Robert Lewis, Mark Fine, and land-use attorney Chris Kaempfer; 1988 explosions in Henderson of Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON), Kerr-McGee, and Kidd & Company marshmallow factory ……………………………………………....…………. 10–20

River Mountains Loop Trail System; Boulder City's Hemenway Park and bighorn sheep; master- planned communities; Operation Yobo, Operation G-Sting, and the Clark County Commission; accomplishments on the commission, and fellow commissioners Don Schlesinger, Thalia Dondero. Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump; Las Vegas stadium ………. 20–31

vi vii

Good afternoon. I'm Stefani Evans, [it’s July 27, 2016,] and I'm sitting in the conference

room at Bruce Woodbury's office.

Mr. Woodbury, would you pronounce and spell your first and last names for the

tape, please?

My name is Bruce Woodbury; B-R-U-C-E, W-O-O-D-B-U-R-Y.

Thank you. Why don't we begin by you telling us a little bit about your early life; where you were born and grew up, and tell us about your family?

Well, I was born in Las Vegas, 1944. I don't remember 1944, but growing up in the forties and the fifties, it was a pretty small town and it was a very nice small town. We had our problems, of course.

My father was Howard Woodbury. When I was born he was a dentist. He went back to professional graduate school and became an oral surgeon a few years after that. He was the only oral surgeon in Southern Nevada until just before he died in 1961, and he was also an anesthesiologist, which they taught in oral surgery school back at the University of Pennsylvania and a residency at one of the big hospitals in Boston when I was a tiny, little boy.

My mother was Elma Lund Woodbury. They both grew up in the Southern Utah area and got married young; I think my mother was eighteen, my father was twenty-one. They went to dental school together at USC. My mother went through business college and then became a secretary to help put him through dental school.

He was a drummer, played in a dance band during dental school to help pay his way as well. He was a dentist, oral surgeon, he was in all kinds of community activities. But one that he loved was is that he was in the Helldorado marching band and they also played at the Helldorado

Rodeo, they'd march in the parades and play at the rodeos. That was fun to tag along with him.

So our home was in the Huntridge area. It's also called, I think, the John S. Park Historic area, on Norman Street. Then we moved when I was about six down to the corner of Seventh

[Street] and Franklin [Avenue], just down the street from the John S. Park School and the church where I went. The neighborhood was just filled with kids. The parents let us kind of run free, it seemed like at the time, to ride our bikes everywhere and walk everywhere without being too worried about us. I played all kinds of sports at the Huntridge central park there, Circle Park.

Anyway, with a few exceptions that every kid has, my memories are pretty fond of my childhood.

How many siblings do you have?

I have one older brother and two younger sisters. My brother is Frank Woodbury; he's a CPA

[Certified Public Accountant] here in Las Vegas. My sister Cindy lives here in Las Vegas also and my sister Pam lives in Park City, Utah. We were pretty close as a family.

Did any of you inherit your father's musical talent?

I did not. In school I got good grades except I got bad grades in penmanship, art, and music. I can't draw. I enjoy music, but I can't carry a tune. We had a little band in elementary school with the flutophone, these little flutes, and I would just have to pretend because I couldn't follow the music, notes, and all that for some reason. There are certain sides of my brain that don't function.

That's true of all of us. So where did you go to school?

Well, John S. Park Elementary School, then Las Vegas High School; I graduated in 1962. I went to college at the University of Utah, graduated in 1966. Started out in pre-dental, pre-med, because in addition to my father I had a grandfather and three uncles who were all doctors, and I thought that was what you were supposed to do. But I really didn't like that part of college, the pre-med. So I switched and started liking college. I majored in political science and I had to take

a lot of English and philosophy and history. Anyway, I graduated Phi Beta Kappa. I went to

Stanford School of Law and tried to decide what I wanted to do. I said, "Well, there's always law

school, I guess."

I was very shy as a kid—fearful of public speaking, really. In our church the kids had to

give talks now and then, and that kind of kept me away from church. So naturally I became a

lawyer and a politician, right?

I was going to ask.

Which shows that you can overcome anything if you put your mind to it.

Or if you have to.

If you have to. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and then find out that you can do okay; then you get confidence and it kind of grows from there, I think, with almost anything.

So you can go back to church now.

Yes. That's true.

Along the way you got married?

Yes, I got married even younger than my parents—or at least I was. I was nineteen and my wife

was nineteen. My parents died; my father when I was sixteen, my mother when I was eighteen.

Of course, my sisters were even younger. I had been going—in those days we call it going

steady—with Rose, since we were sixteen. Then we just decided to get married. Somehow she's

still putting up with me after fifty-two years, seven children. We're about to have, I think, our

twenty-third grandchild and our first great-grandchild any day now.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

On all of that.

Yes, I'm a lucky guy.

So after law school...?

After law school I took a job as a law clerk for Judge Howard Babcock here in Las Vegas. I had

job offers in California, where I was going to law school. We liked the Bay Area, but we just

wanted to come home. We were both born here in Las Vegas; our families were here and our

friends were here, for the most part. So we decided to come back and I became a law clerk for a

year, took the bar exam, went into law practice. We kind of took a risk. We were four young

guys started out in a law—Jim Rogers who became the owner of television stations and became

chancellor of the university system was our senior partner. I think he was about twenty- seven or

twenty-eight years old, and the rest of us were twenty-four, twenty-five years old.

So who were the partners?

Jim Rogers, Tom Lea, Doug Whitney, and myself. Within a few years Earl Monsey became a partner. It would be fun to have an alumni party from that firm because there were dozens of really good lawyers that came and eventually we went our separate ways. I was with Jim for fourteen years and then he was going into the broadcast industry. I was actually a part owner of that TV station. I sold my interest to him and Lou Wiener. I was going in the political direction a little bit and became a [Clark] County commissioner in 1981. So we decided to go our separate ways.

Then I became a partner with two of my boyhood friends, Gardner Jolley and Bill Urga, who also grew up in that same neighborhood. So now it's Jolley, Urga, Woodbury, and Little

since 1984.

I had always been interested in politics and government, thought I'd maybe someday get

involved even though I had that shyness to contend with when I was younger. I remember when I

was a little boy, before we had TV, sitting in front of our big radio in 1952—so I would have

been maybe seven, going on eight years old—listening to the political conventions and just being

fascinated by it.

At the age of eight?

At that age, yes. I just loved it. I talked to my parents about the candidates and all that. That plus

sports. I became a rabid New York Yankees baseball fan and every other sport. The kids at Las

Vegas High School were my heroes when I was a little boy, because we didn't have a college

here until the mid-to-late fifties. So anyway, sports and politics plus just playing with the kids

around town. But I always had that interest.

So in 1980, Bob Broadbent was the county commissioner representing what's called

District A. Rose and I and the kids we had then, we had just moved to Boulder City in 1978 from

Las Vegas, and the district included Boulder City and that's where Bob Broadbent was from. He

resigned to take a position in the Bureau of Reclamation, in the new Reagan administration. So

there was a vacancy. And the governor, who was then Robert List, had to appoint someone to fill

that spot until the next election.

I didn't throw my hat in the ring, but a couple of people over the period of a few weeks

said, "I understand you want to be the county commissioner." I said, "What are you talking

about?" Well, it turns out some of my friends who knew the governor pretty well—Sig Rogich

and Joe Brown, I think Mike Sloan—some of which went to high school with me. Anyway, they

had put my name up. So finally I found out how my name got out there. So I got the competitive

juices flowing. "All right, I'm going for it."

So it came down between me and a city councilman in Henderson. I didn't hold any office at that point. The governor for whatever strange reason appointed me. He kind of had a

5 hard time getting rid of me after that. Twenty-eight years.

We moved here in 1980, and when you retired from the commission, it was a shock because you had been a commissioner the whole time.

Yes, it was like...I guess I resist change. People urged me and kind of helped pave the way for me to run for different offices—Congress, Attorney General, U.S. Senate, whatever—and I always gave it consideration, but I always decided, no, I think I can accomplish a lot right here in local government, and I didn't want to move my family to Carson City or Washington, D.C.

So I just stayed, kept running for re-election as a county commissioner. First couple of elections were pretty tough. I spent every day going door to door. But then I was able to win. Then after that they were relatively easy elections.

So from the time you went on the commission, how many districts were there at that time?

Well, there has always been seven districts. I think there had only been five commissioners a few years before that, but by then there were seven. At every census you would redistrict it for equal population. Well, this district was about half the county in area, all the way down to Laughlin and Searchlight, Boulder City in the south, at that point all of Henderson, East Las Vegas, which is now Whitney, a lot of Sunrise Manor, Sunrise Mountain, and all the way out to Moapa Valley,

Mesquite, Bunkerville, all these separate little towns and cities in this vast area, and it was also the fastest growing in population. So it was a challenge.

In fact, the first year I was in office, trying to keep up with being commissioner and representing all those areas and people, keeping up with the family, I had decided, I'm not going to run for this; I can't do it; I cannot do this. But with some counseling from some friends and finally a lot of introspection, I can't run away from this; I would regret that for the rest of my life; I've got to at least go for it. The newspapers were saying I was the underdog to be elected.

Some people who had already been in office were running, from different offices were going to

challenge me. But once I get into a contest I get very competitive and I want to win, and so I

went all out. My wife compensated for my absence from the home. I still tried to...When the kids

were doing their homework, I was doing mine, but I was also out walking, knocking on doors

with friends and other family people, and meeting with political consultants. So we won each

time.

Now, did the district get progressively smaller geographically as the population filled in?

It did a little because—yes—because my district became the biggest in population. So we had to give up areas. We gave up the Whitney/East Las Vegas area. At one point, the last time we did it,

I think I lost Sunrise Manor, but I gained over toward the Enterprise, south county, and over towards Spanish Trail and that area. I always had the outlying towns of Laughlin, Searchlight,

Moapa Valley, Mesquite and Bunkerville although they divided Moapa Valley and Mesquite, part into my district and part into another district.

So two of you got to go out there and knock on doors?

Yes, yes, and those doors are pretty far apart out there.

There's lots of bottles of water in between.

Yes. It was fun.

It seems like the eighties and the nineties were the period of amazing growth in this area.

So what were some of the challenges that you faced on the commission with that?

Yes, it was incredible growth during that entire time I was on the commission. That's when it really started, I think in the eighties, early eighties, maybe even a little before, and never stopped the whole time I was on the commission. The recession started just before I got off the commission, I think; the fall of 2008, I think, was kind of a financial point of implosion in some

respects and then it started. But until then it was nothing but growth.

I was not one who was always a big fan of uncontrolled growth. It was great financially

for a lot of people and created a lot of jobs. It also attracted a lot of people to come from

elsewhere for those jobs. We had a very tough time keeping up with the infrastructure. But with

planning and zoning we tried to make the developers pay as much as possible in order to offset

the growth they were creating.

It didn't take too long after I got on the commission that I decided I needed to try to do some things in a major way about some of our infrastructure deficits, particularly in transportation, flood control, air quality, and our planning and zoning system to get a better handle on it. So the first issue I think I took on, I was the chairman of an obscure committee—

the rookies, they don't give you the big plumb regional board appointments—so it was called the

Environmental Quality Advisory Committee. Nobody had ever heard of it or heard from it. So I

started making waves about our air quality. I'd drive up over Railroad Pass from Boulder City

and see this awful cloud and smog. Part of it was just our natural terrain, traps, and inversions

that showed we weren't doing what we should do to control the emissions from motor vehicles or

from industrial sites, sources, power plants, and so on.

So I started making waves about that and getting some press and getting pushback from a

lot of people. "What? You're suggesting we have smog checks? Oh, my gosh." That was one

reason they were predicting I wasn't going to get elected the first time, but we survived that.

Eventually there was smog checks.

I eventually created what was called the Clean Air Action Plan to get a handle on a lot of

the sources of pollution and do it in the way that hopefully was business-friendly and not have

the federal government impose solutions on us although there was some of that coming and it did

8 come. I think we've made major improvements there.

A lot of my district was ravaged by flooding in the early eighties. So I went to the legislature in 1983 to try to get a flood control district created; it didn't succeed that time. But in

'84 there was more flooding all over, election year.

I remember being in a house out in Overton, Moapa Valley, helping them to dig mud out of the basement. But anyway, so in the 1985 legislature, this time we were able to get legislation to create a flood control district and the ability to take it to a vote of the people for a funding source, quarter-cent sales tax. I became the first chairman of that Flood Control District and led the campaign to get the public approval. I guess we made hundreds of speeches all over the county and we were successful. That's I think hopefully made a big difference as well.

Another big issue was we were really falling behind in transportation. We had a freeway and road system that would accommodate maybe a population of two hundred and fifty thousand people and very little funding to do anything about it. While I was on the Regional

Transportation Commission, we did a few stop gap measures with bond issues and things. But I finally said, "This is not going to work."

So in 1989—I was the chairman of the county commission at that time, as well as a member of the RTC [Regional Transportation Commission], soon to be the chairman of the

RTC—I proposed a master transportation plan and a funding scenario where we needed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars of local money to go along with what we then hoped to be a better share of the state and federal money in which we were not getting. But if we were showing we were doing our part, then they would have to come through. So I got a lot of citizens together—business people, labor, representatives of different industries and citizen advocacy groups—and then got the county and the RTC to work on plans that we could take to the people

for a beltway, a vastly improved road system and a transit system. We didn't have any public bus

system at the time. There was a private bus company that didn't serve much beyond the Strip and

downtown a little bit.

It was not easy to get the resort industry to get onboard and the developers to get onboard

and all the others, but we proposed an increase in the gasoline tax, a little increase in the sales tax

for transit, an increase in the hotel/motel room tax, a developer tax for transportation, a motor

vehicle privilege tax; there was like six different sources. People said, "You're crazy; the public

won't go for that." But the gridlock was starting and people were feeling it and we mounted a

pretty strong campaign and it passed.

Then we had to take that mandate to the legislature to get them to approve it because the

county just didn't have authority to enact those measures ourselves. So it was an advisory

question that we took a mandate to the legislature.

If we had done transit as a separate issue, it would not have passed. Most people were not

interested in improving the bus system. But we rolled it all together; we wrapped the other

transportation funds around it. So it was approved along with the rest of it. We are certainly not

out of the woods in terms of needs for transportation improvements, but we've come a long way.

Oh, we have. So what do you think of the plans for the Maryland Parkway, the

revitalization of it?

For like a rapid rail system of some sort?

Yes.

Yes, I'm in favor of all the above, any transportation options that we can give the public

including mass transit. There have been plans to do a light rail system, take it down the Strip, but it's not going to happen until the resorts get onboard and they're not onboard, yet anyway.

Maryland Parkway is the other option and that's more likely, I think. We'd have to tie it in, integrate it into the bus system. It's of limited value, but it is of value. I'm on the board now of the [Las Vegas] Monorail Company.

So tell us about the Monorail.

The Monorail from day one has done a lot of good in terms of giving our visitors and conventioneers another option to get out of vehicles and into mass transit, and it really has helped to relieve the gridlock around Paradise and the convention center during big conventions.

It's carried large numbers of people. It's always made an operating profit. It didn't make enough to pay back the initial construction bonds. So a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy was filed and the debt was restructured and now it's able to proceed. There are plans now to take it, from the south point of where it is now at the MGM, south and around to the west side of the Strip to the

Mandalay Bay where you'd have a station there, and, hopefully, an interim station at the Sands

Expo, which the monorail goes right by there now. So you'd have a link of all the convention centers.

Oh, that would be great.

The Las Vegas Convention Center, Sands Expo, Mandalay Bay. There's always talk about taking it to [McCarran International] Airport, but that's not part of the present.

Do you see that as likely?

Yes, I do, unless you've got a light rail system going there and integrate that with the Monorail.

But eventually you've got to have one or the other and the Monorail is there; it's on the ground; it works. You'd have to work out the logistics for luggage and all that, but they do that at every airport. But, yes, eventually it will go there, I think.

It seems like most major cities now—Los Angeles excepted—San Francisco, Salt Lake City,

etc., you can get off your plane, get your luggage, walk through the airport, get on a train,

and be at your hotel in half an hour or less.

Right. Yes, that's one big thing that people are surprised about when they come here. Where's the

rail system? There are all kinds of options from our airport, all kinds of shuttle buses to the

hotels and, of course, the taxis and limos. But sometimes people have to wait a long time for a

taxi. There's not even a good bus system from the airport to the Strip.

No. And Uber pickup [ride hailing service] is quite awkward to reach.

Yes. It's a part of the visitor experience that needs to be addressed, for sure.

It's the first thing people see when they get off their plane.

Yes, I agree. You would think the resorts would be pushing more for it and being more proactive

about helping us accomplish things, but they're all kind of, well, we get our customers here by

this way and that way. So it hasn't happened. The one reason the Monorail doesn't do even better

is that the stations are in the back of the hotels, because the hotels wouldn't allow them to be in

the front.

Didn't want to mess up their pretty buildings?

Yes. So that's a bit of a challenge. But there's a cooperative effort with most of the hotels to let

people know it's there and help them get there.

Now, how did the decision come about to install the raised crosswalks at Flamingo [Road] and Tropicana [Avenue]?

That was part of this money from that initiative that went to the voters back in 1990. The hotel and motel room tax was raised for transportation, and getting the pedestrians out of the street was one big goal. Public Works people at the County working with the hotels and some of us on the

commission working with the hotels came up with those proposals that traffic will flow so much

better and the pedestrians will be happier if you can get them off the street. So now we have

several of these crossings. Each one was a major battle, not to do it, but how to do it, where the

public would enter and exit on each side, on each corner. Will it be right in front of my place or

in my door, or will it be down the street in my door? I mean, every step of the way was a fight

with the hotels, the resorts against each other and lobbying for it. In the end we just had to do

endless negotiations and sometimes make some people not too happy with the decision.

The Clark County commission may have made people unhappy, but I don't think I ever

read a word or have seen a quote disparaging you on the commission.

You probably just don't know the right people.

I must not.

I don't know. I did have my detractors over the years. Everybody does. It was not a lot, though.

I'd get a nasty letter here and there. You've got to. You've got to make people unhappy.

But it does give you bragging rights.

But, yes, I felt pretty good about the reputation that I established. I met a lot of people and I just

considered it a tremendous opportunity to have been able to be there. There were all kinds of

factions on the commission, people who hated each other. I just always tried to stay out of that

and tried to work with all of them. There's only seven of you. You've got to be able to count to

four to get anything done and it can't be just the same four every time. It's not that difficult to get

along with people, even politicians, with our egos and whatever.

So in this project we're interviewing architects, politicians, planners, construction people,

infrastructure people, etc., and each field seems to think that they've got a lock on ego.

That's involved in every walk of life. Successful people often have an ego of some sort. You like

to be, well, I'm humble. Well, you should try to be humble and you should try to be, of course,

mainly concerned about what you're doing for others, but there's got to be an element of ego that

you want to succeed, I think, to accomplish. I think Mother Teresa had an ego.

Sure. Wanting to be the best at something, there's ego in that in wanting to excel.

Yes, at least to do your best. Yes, for sure.

Certainly in the fields that you enjoyed—sports and politics—definitely.

Competition. There's got to be a will to win.

So what is your field in law?

Well, when I started I did everything—I mean, everything. In fact, a guy who was convicted of first degree murder, I took that to the Nevada Supreme Court and got the conviction reversed and then we got him acquitted on the new trial. I did everything from that to parking tickets to divorces, adoptions, name changes, pregnant girls who were underage, getting court orders to let them get married. There was always a lot of wills, trusts, contracts, personal injury, just litigation of all kinds. But after I got on the county commission I had to scale back; I couldn't do everything. It took up so much time to be a commissioner. So I spent about half my time doing county stuff and half my time doing law firm stuff. And the day had to expand; I had to take work home all the time. So I started concentrating on estate planning and probate and personal injury, although I had to stop going to court very much because I just couldn't fit it in. So I'd have others that would help me do court appearances.

Later on, my hearing impairment has kind of kept me out of the courtroom, too, after I got off the commission and had more time. I have cochlear implants. My hearing got to that point where first on one side and then the other, I had surgery to do the cochlear implants.

When did you have those done?

I think the first one was maybe a dozen years ago; the second one was maybe four or five years

after that. The first one was at UCLA Medical Center. The second one was at UMC when they

started doing them here. So if your hearing gets bad enough where—and mine was progressive

deafness; they think it was probably hereditary; I don't know—where it just kept getting worse, if

it gets bad enough where hearing aids aren't going to help you anymore...I kept getting stronger

and stronger hearing aids and finally they said, "You're a perfect candidate for cochlear

implants." So they have to destroy whatever natural hearing you have when they go in there for

the surgery and implant microbes in your inner ear to replace the hair follicles. In my skull I have

a magnet and this [gestures to a spot behind ear], a little magnet here. There's a receiver and a

transmitter, battery powered. I have to change the batteries every three days or so. Your brain has

to learn a whole new way of hearing. When they first turned mine on after the surgery—you have to let it heal for a couple of months—oh, my gosh, everybody sounded like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. But little by little your brain adjusts. Now it seems normal. If I'm in a noisy situation, I have trouble hearing anything, even if I'm right here next to you; but, otherwise, if it's fairly quiet and I'm fairly close, I do pretty well. It's such a blessing. It's a miracle. It sure beats the heck out of being deaf. For watching TV, I have to have the captions on. If I go to a movie, they have now at every movie almost, they have this caption-view equipment. It's wonderful for people like me.

When did you first notice the hearing loss?

In law school, but just a little. Then after I started practicing law, it just kept getting a little worse. Then I finally broke down and went to an audiologist who prescribed hearing aids. But they're a pain in the butt, so you stop using them or you just use them on one side. But eventually you have to get used to them if you want to hear. Then you get stronger ones and stronger ones and adjust them. It was just a constant battle.

Anyone else in your family have it?

Well, my sister Cindy has developed in recent years a hearing impairment. She has hearing aids, not nearly as bad as mine, but she's there. My parents didn't. Of course, they died pretty young, in their early fifties. So probably a recessive gene of some sort got through to me, because it wasn't something that ran in the family necessarily, either side.

I grew up in Southern California, where we have lots of freeways. But I had never seen this pattern of building where the traffic was funneled onto frontage roads and we could watch the bridges being built and the grading for the freeway being built. It seemed like with the

CC-215 Bruce Woodbury Beltway, the County allowed us to develop a pattern of use of that roadway before the roadway was even in. I really liked it.

We started out at the Henderson end because that's where the biggest traffic projections were. By the way, it was a big battle getting the location of the Beltway, especially the southern leg. All neighborhoods came out of the woodwork to protest the placement being too close to them.

Everyone wanted it to be a half mile to a mile away, for easy access, but don't make it too close because I don't want to hear it or see it. I mean, a major battle, and it was all in my district.

But anyway, so we started out where we're going to build it segment by segment starting with Henderson, and then we soon realized that we can't do it that way. We've got to build partial freeways and just road systems, to get a path all the way around. Okay, the first segment, maybe it's a full freeway; the next segment is four lanes; then when we got out to the northwest, we just had a two-lane highway and, like you say, frontage roads so that people would have something and could access what's there as an alternative. We'd then go back and, segment by segment, put in additional lanes. Almost now—I say "we" because I still consider it kind of mine, I guess—

It's got your name on it.

I think they are about at the last leg out in the North Las Vegas area to put in the full freeway all the way around. They'll still go back and enhance it, the lanes and the interchanges and all, but we're almost there. Fifty-three miles of freeway built almost entirely with local money; that way we didn't have to go through federal environmental impact studies that would delay it for years and years.

It seemed like it got done pretty fast.

Pretty fast. We've gone back and gotten federal money for interchange improvements and things.

We really didn't lose any federal money, but we were able to bypass a lot of the delays that usually meant no benefit to anybody.

And the interchanges are beautiful.

Yes.

How did that happen?

Well, I don't take claim for that. I did the political work, a lot of it, but good county public works department and they hired good engineers who design it and a lot of public input too from the cities and public meetings. So they did a good job.

I was talking to someone who lives in Salt Lake City and they got a lot of road improvements before the Olympics.

Right.

They were kind of miffed that their interchanges weren't pretty ones like ours.

Yes, we do have some good designs. Some people think it's a waste of money, but I don't. I think if you spend all that time in your car, you want to have a little nicer environment. It doesn't cost that much.

I always smile when I go under the Cactus Overpass.

Good, good. Yes, I'm glad. I mean, I didn't say, "Okay, you guys named this after me, so you better make it pretty." But I'm glad they did.

They did make it pretty. I'm kind of glad that Salt Lake City is jealous of all our interchanges.

Yes, me too.

So we talked about air quality, transportation, flood control. Planning and zoning...?

There came a point where we just...I think I had some of the other commissioners to go along with me to put in some reforms to make it difficult to put in a development that did not conform to the master plan; in fact, a super majority, but that was struck down by the Supreme Court as being unauthorized by state law. But other hoops they had to jump through, any developer, and you'd have to have all kinds of meetings with the public, it helped to focus the attention of the developers on the existing neighborhoods. You've got to do what you've got to do to make it compatible with existing neighborhoods. By the way, we're not just going to approve anything.

For a while there were commissioners that didn't want to improve anything; growth, growth, growth. That wasn't me; I didn't like that. Maybe that's why I live in Boulder City; we have controlled growth. When I was a kid growing up in Las Vegas, it was a small town; I liked that.

Don't tell anybody, but I like it a lot better than I like Las Vegas now even though I still love the community. But it was really special little place back then.

As someone who lives in the County, I appreciate your attention to compatibility issues.

We always wanted to know what the town advisory recommendation was, and, if there were a lot of protesters, I would drive to make the developer meet with them. I had a little bit of a reputation, a bad reputation with some of the developers that I paid too much attention to the concerns of the protesters and town boards, citizen groups.

Who are some of the developers that stand out in your mind as being really responsive to

the community and to what you were trying to do?

That's a good point. Let me think. Richard Plaster was one. He'd always kind of let me know in

his sarcastic humorous way that he didn't agree with me on things, but we always were able to

work things out. He was a good guy and would work with us. Robert Lewis. Mark Fine. One of

the representatives of a lot of the developers was Chris Kaempfer, attorney, who I have the

greatest respect for and affection. He would always work with you and try to get his clients to

come around and be cooperative. He was a force for harmony and compatibility even though he

had to represent a client. Sometimes you'd have to try to get something on that I didn't like. So

those are some of the names that come to mind and I'm sure there was plenty of others.

Green Valley wouldn't have been your bailiwick although transportation would have been.

But what about Summerlin; how did that affect that huge swath of growth?

Well, Green Valley is part of the City of Henderson, so we didn't have planning and zoning

jurisdiction over it, but it was part of my district. Oh, there's a huge...Well, there was an

explosion. Remember PEPCON [the Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada

(PEPCON) chemical plant in Henderson exploded in 1988]?

Yes, toasted marshmallows. [Ed. Note: The PEPCON explosion caused explosions at several nearby manufactories, including the Kidd & Company marshmallow factory, after which the smell of toasted marshmallows hung throughout the Las Vegas Valley.]

Was that 1988? Something like that. Boy, did we have...You had the industrial plants and their defenders in the old part of Henderson and you had Green Valley wanting to make them go away. "Woodbury, what are you going to do about it?" So that was an interesting time.

What did you do about it?

Helped to create the Apex Industrial Park [in North Las Vegas]. Kerr-McGee moved their ammonia perchlorate operation out there, PEPCON moved theirs near Cedar City, Utah, I think, and the other plants stayed where they are for the most part.

Is the marshmallow plant still there?

I don't know. I do not know.

I don't either.

That's a good question. If you find out, let me know. We should Google it, I guess.

There you go.

Yes, toasted marshmallows. So I had again dozens and dozens of meetings with both sides and brought some of them together. But they were tumultuous times. But I tell you, when Mayor Jim

Gibson took office, I think really it was kind of a renaissance in the City of Henderson. They grew and grew, maybe faster than I like, but they did it in a pretty nice way. Their park system is really good, much better than the County's. So I give [Gibson] a lot of credit. He was kind of a partner of mine in working on a lot of regional issues. He was on the RTC and Flood Control

District for a while.

They've got a fully connected trail system out there?

Yes. The County's got a trail system in the works, too, but Henderson has just done a better job in terms of parks and recreation and trails or anything like that.

Now, will [Clark] County's trails link up with Henderson's?

Supposed to, yes.

Oh, excellent.

And Boulder City's. What do they call it there? Mountain... There was a trail system from

Boulder City up over the mountains down into Henderson, the River Mountains Loop Trail

System, I think it is.

Nice.

Have you ever been out to Hemenway Park, where the bighorn sheep come down?

No.

In Boulder City. You drive down to Boulder City towards Lake Mead and there's a park on your left. It's an area there with a view of the lake. Herds of bighorn sheep come down into the park to graze.

Oh, my gosh.

You leave them alone. If you walk towards them, they'll kind of run away. You have to keep the kids from doing that. That's another thing, marvelous.

I've only ever seen one. Magnificent, though. So what about Summerlin and the [Clark

County] commission? It was thousands of acres.

Part of it was in the city of Las Vegas. Most of it, I think, was in the County. Well, I think it started in the city of Las Vegas and then they expanded into the county. A master-planned development and planning their own development and bringing it to the governmental entity as kind of a finished product with the City and then the County weighing in on different issues, making sure the transportation systems, and drainage, and all the planning and zoning items were there. Kind of like a lot of the Henderson development, maybe even better out in Summerlin.

It seems like for the County commission having a master planned community like that makes your work easier.

Oh, much so, much easier.

Because you don't have the battles over drugstores on corners and whatnot.

Yes, and it's put down in areas where there is not development now although in some cases it

came close to other neighborhoods. There have been controversies in Summerlin. When the

Station Casinos wanted to put in the Red Rock Hotel and Casino with a tower, a big, big fight.

They still got a tower, but just not...

Not as big. Not as tall.

...not as big. So I have to ask you... On a county commission where several of your

colleagues ended up going to prison, how is it that Bruce Woodbury never got caught up in

that kind of thing?

Well, I hope it was because of a sense of morality and character. I think reputation was part of it; they never approached me.

They knew what the answer would be?

I think they knew what the answer would be that I'd go directly to the authorities. The

commissioners that went through that, I didn't consider them bad people at the time, but some of

them... You talk about ego; that really gets involved sometimes. Some of the strip-club people

started wining and dining them, and they started thinking, I guess, man, there's all that money

out there, and I'm really this important guy or girl, and I should have some of that, right? I don't

know. I'm just trying to put myself in their minds.

Back in the early eighties, the first scandal was called the Operation Yobo investigation,

an undercover guy, Steve Rybar. Two commissioners and, I think, a couple of state legislators

went to jail over that, posing as a developer and them wanting...Then this G-Sting scandal was, I

guess, wiretaps and things involving a strip-club guy.

In the first one, one of the commissioners was on tape. They were asking about other

commissioners. "How about Thalia?" "Eh, stay away from her." "How about Woodbury?" "No,

you can't touch him with a ten-foot pole." My campaign guys really liked that. They played that

22 back the next campaign.

It was kind of funny—or a little sad after that G-Sting. I was still on the commission and there were people that would say to me, "Oh, thank you for being my commissioner; you're so honest." I'm thinking, should I be congratulated for the basic minimum that you should expect from any public servant; not taking bribes, being honest? In a way, they made us look good; on the other hand, there were people who thought, well, if some of them are doing it, they're all doing it. So it kind of weighs both ways.

Were you surprised?

Yes. After it came out I thought back and said, "Well, I shouldn't have been surprised because..."

Just things about some of the commissioners. I was surprised about Mary Kincaid-Chauncey. I still don't understand that one. I still want to believe she didn't have a criminal intent. I don't know. The other three, I'm not real surprised. I don't have anything against them. I was friendly with them and I liked them, but I saw things going on. Going out during a commission meeting in the hallway and calling somebody, and hearing a little glimpse, I could kind of tell they were conferring with somebody about how they should vote or something. Or just seeing a vote made that shocked me about approving a strip club permit that I thought was [not appropriate]—or not allowing some enforcement action then; I can't remember exactly, but why are you voting that way?

There's a CVS [corner drugstore] very near where I live that doesn't belong there; it was approved during that time.

Yes, yes. I don't like to think about it, but it was twice in my tenure that there was bad stuff going on.

While it seems like a lot, you were on the commission for a long time. And other cities go

through this, too, other political jurisdictions go through this, too. But it does seem like

here it was the County commission.

Even when I was a kid growing up here, the County commission was always controversial. I

didn't pay that much attention when I was a kid, but I just remember there was always some big

controversy and some of it had to do with corruption allegations. I don't know why. The County

commission in Clark County, Nevada, is a very powerful body compared to a lot of places,

because we're not only the County regional government, but basically the municipal power over

an area that's much bigger and more populous than the City of Las Vegas, the unincorporated

area of the County. Most communities don't have that. They get annexed into the cities. But our

laws were kind of fixed in place and hard to change. Before I was on the commission, my

predecessor, Bob Broadbent, was a pretty powerful commissioner, and he worked with the legislature to make it very difficult for cities to annex developed areas of the unincorporated county. So, as you know, the Las Vegas Strip is not in Las Vegas; it's in the County and under the County commission.

So with great authority and power go great temptation, and, as some would say, power corrupts. You really do have to be careful. Anybody in a position of authority has to make sure you're not exercising unrighteous dominion and ask yourself, are you doing things for the right

reason? Remember you're here to serve the public, not the other way around. Don't let it go to

your head. Don't do things for the wrong reason. You really have to remind yourself.

And remind yourself that all these people are paying respect to the office and not—

Yes, exactly.

—to the person.

Yes, suddenly when you leave office, you're not too popular anymore.

Says the man who recently left office.

Which was fine with me.

Voluntarily.

But it's very clear when you're gone you're gone. There are a lot of people that are still very friendly and that I like and they like me that I met during the commission and stuff.

So in terms of the growth and the way it played out, what are some of the battles that stand out in your mind that you lost, that you wish had gone another way?

I never lost.

Oh, right, because you're so competitive.

I did lose, I'm sure. I'm trying to think. Well, let's see. What happened? I can't think of too many specifics, but there were a number of zone changes where I was on the losing end or liquor licenses and gaming licenses where I was on the losing end. You vote on thousands of things every year.

Does anything stand out as a hard-fought battle that you're really pleased that went your

way?

Yes, the Beltway, getting the transportation plans approved, getting the flood control program

approved, getting clean air plans approved. There were a number of votes on clean air where I

had commissioners opposing it. Here I am this Republican and I was being accused of being a

left wing liberal because I was in favor of clean air.

The Beltway alignment, we ended up putting it where it belonged; that was one. The

Monorail system, I'm on the board now, but then, of course, I wasn't. I was in favor of it all the

way, because it's another option, and there was battle after battle on that. Some of the road

improvements, the Desert Inn Super Arterial, which is a really good one, we always thought it

25 should be on Desert Inn, but there were people who wanted to divert it and create on- and off- ramps at their properties.

Oh, of course.

So the Super Arterial wouldn't have been so super, right? It would just be another street.

It's really good except if you get going on it—and I can't remember which direction it is— you can't get off—

That's true.

—until you've gone all the way across.

Yes, you better want to be on it. That's true.

But I like that one.

Things like that. Oh, I remember there was a big battle; some of my fellow commissioners wanted to censure one of their other commissioners, Don Schlesinger. Paul Christensen was his arch enemy.

For?

I don't even remember what it was all about. By talking to both sides and then at the meeting trying to kind of be a mediator where they would work it out and back it off. The press was very good about...They thought what was going on was bad. Something else just came to mind, but I can't remember now.

How long did you serve with Thalia Dondero?

Well, Thalia was on the board when I came on. She had come on in the 1970s, I think. So she was one of my original colleagues and I always loved Thalia. When I lived in Las Vegas before I moved to Boulder City, it was in that same neighborhood where I grew up and she lived just down the street. So we got to know her there a little bit. She served most of the time I was on,

26 maybe until six years before I got off or something. Myrna Williams ran against her and defeated her, took that seat from her.

Oh, I remember that.

Then Thalia went from there to the Board of Regents.

She did okay for herself.

There was the original board; there was Manny Cortez and Thalia Dondero, Dick Ronzone, and a couple of guys that went to jail, Woodrow Wilson and Jack Petitti. Yes, I served with, I think, about thirty different commissioners over the years and only seven of us got major jail sentences.

That's not bad. That's less than a third, but I'm very bad at math. So I normally don't ask people this and you can tell me if you don't want to answer. But you are a Republican, you've been in public office, and it is an election year. So...?

Yes?

May I ask if you're supporting a Republican this year for president?

Well, yes, I am. Some people are kind of surprised by that. Mr. Trump was not my first choice for the nomination. He was not my second choice, or my third choice, or my fourth choice. I was supporting Marco Rubio. For a while after it became clear, I wasn't sure what I was going to do.

But I am a Republican. I just think that it gets kind of out of balance if one party has the presidency for more than eight years at a time, frankly. It just goes too far in one direction with

Supreme Court appointments and regulatory agencies. Trump is... He's not my style in many ways. I like Mike Pence. I like some of the people he's surrounded himself with. I think he'll be okay. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton, I'm sorry.

It's a tough election.

It is a very tough election. There are a lot of people that are just really struggling with it, as I

27 have been.

How about your wife?

Same, pretty much the same as me. We both really wanted Marco Rubio.

What do you think happened?

Well, number one, the Trump phenomenon that I never really did understand until maybe recently about how he seems to appeal to people who just think the establishment and the government—whether Republican or Democrat—have given them the finger; I think they feel that they want somebody who will stand up for the forgotten guy, and they want change, and I didn't really understand that. Marco made some mistakes, one big one in one of the debates, even though he was a superb debater. How he let himself keep making out with stupid mistakes... And then the media made so much out of it. But I think if he were the nominee he would be ten points ahead right now—maybe not, because nobody gets that far ahead these days, but six or seven points. If you had the right VP nominee, you'd appeal to Independents and a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans, in my opinion.

Yes, it's an interesting year.

Yes. So many people are not voting for somebody; they're voting against somebody and kind of holding their nose while they're doing it.

Well, I actually wasn't going to ask that question, but...

Ask me, I'll tell you the truth.

Is there anything you'd like to add about growth and Clark County?

Yes, it's just too damn big anymore. What do we have, two million people?

Something like that.

I remember when it was ten thousand people, when I was a kid. Then we got up to fifty

28 thousand. I like for our family we were kind of proud that Las Vegas was going to be bigger than

Reno because it wasn't.

No.

There's a lot about Las Vegas that's very exciting, a lot of cultural opportunities and sports and entertainment, of course. I like the old Las Vegas a lot.

What do you think about the stadium?

Yes, I'm for it, if the resorts are willing. I don't hear them objecting to raising the hotel/motel room tax. People say, "Well, you can use that for education." Well, yes, you can say that about anything, but we just raised a lot of taxes for education, which I was in favor of. My daughter is a state legislator. She voted in favor of it. She was the chairman of the education committee in the last session.

Is her surname Woodbury?

Melissa Woodbury. My son is Rod Woodbury; he's the mayor of Boulder City.

And we are hoping to get an interview with him.

I think it would be great to have a professional football team. UNLV needs a stadium, too.

Very much so.

It would be nice to have a football team to go with it, too.

There you go.

I'm a loyal fan. But here we go, another disappointing season, right?

Well, there's always next year, right?

That's right. I never give up.

Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you.

This was great and I really appreciate your time.

You're welcome. Sorry I couldn't remember certain details on a lot of things.

They kept all my clippings year by year from the commission and stuff. So I have twenty-eight years' worth.

Would you consider donating those to UNLV Special Collections?

Nobody would ever read them.

Yes, they would.

Sure. You'd have to make copies for me.

We will do that.

If you want them, sure.

Yes. Excellent. Peter Michel will be contacting you. He is our curator/archivist and he knows exactly what researchers want and what they're looking for. But your papers as commissioner would be amazing.

I haven't gone through them in a long time. A lot of it is probably fading newsprint. Some of it's copied, Xerox. But a lot of it is just in news clippings from the [Las Vegas] Review-Journal, the

[Las Vegas] Sun, the Laughlin Times, the Moapa Valley This, the Mesquite That.

What about your own records, like notes to yourself or memos?

I have some of that. I don't know how much we kept. I'd just have to pull it out and see.

Because that would be really valuable to researchers, too, especially considering your longevity on the commission.

Well, you're welcome to have anybody look through whatever I can dig up.

Well, thank you so much.

Thanks for thinking of me. You guys have an interesting job, don't you?

I love my job. I can't believe I get paid to do this.

[End of recorded interview]