Oh, snap! Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman must have realized that the year was coming to a close, and that his chances of winning the coveted Irony Prize were not yet sewn up. So he jumped in with a last-minute, at-the-buzzer quote that’s sure to capture the title!

How else to describe this remark, contained in a city news release about the city putting off a decision to engage in a fruitless legal fight to stop airplanes from making the so-called "right turn" over the city. "This is not an issue of rich and poor," Goodman is quoted as saying in the release. "These planes will be coming right over the core of the city and the important issue is public safety. We also must be prudent in the way we are stewards of the public’s dollars."

The emphasis is ours. The irony is his.

The mayor who has said his job is "like playing Monopoly with other people’s money" now claims we need to be prudent in being stewards of the public’s dollars? The man who has given away tax breaks to for-profit businesses wants to be prudent in spending public money? The man whose ex-"chief of staff" ordered a city video crew to work all night for on a video news release of Goodman partying at a downtown bar is suddenly frugal? The man who ordered (and then claimed he didn’t) thousands of dollars worth of videotapes of his own TV appearances, all charged to the city, has become a piker where tax dollars are concerned? The man who has spent taxpayer money on fucking bobblehead dolls of himself is holding forth on fiscal responsibility?!

Now that’s irony on a universal scale. Mayor Goodman, we’re confident that you have beaten out all competitors (including Vice President Dick Cheney, no small feat) for the 2006 Irony Prize. Congratulations.

» That’s two down for Team Gibbons.

First, the new administration has forced out George Togliatti, the ex-FBI agent who left casino security to join state government as Gov. Kenny Guinn’s director of the Department of Public Safety. The department oversees all state law-enforcement, from the Highway Patrol to the Investigations Division to the state fire marshal.

Gibbons spokesman Brent Boynton confirmed to the Review-Journal that Togliatti was told  by Gibbons’ people the new governor "wanted a change of direction at the Department of Public Safety." We don’t know why: Other than a high-profile sexual-harassment lawsuit at the Highway Patrol, Togliatti seemed to be doing a fairly good job as the state’s top cop.

But the more damaging departure is that of Donna Coleman, former president of the Las Vegas Children’s Advocacy Alliance, and late of Gibbons’ transition team on public safety. Coleman, who re-registered as a Republican and publicly supported Gibbons during what Review-Journal writer Molly Ball identified as his campaign’s one moment of policy utterance, said she felt she wasn’t really valued on the transition team.

No! Really? Color us shocked!

"I haven’t been contacted by anybody about anything since the election. People don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing with these transition teams," Coleman said.

Indeed. Let’s see what Boynton had to say about that.

"Jim Gibbons has always welcomed her input and he hopes to get input from her in the future," Boynton said in the R-J story. "Jim Gibbons remains committed to the input of these people [transition team members]. He knows he’s getting diverse opinions, and he believes that’s the best way to get input about the issues important to Nevadans, although not everybody is going to agree."

Can we at least agree to reduce the use of the word "input" to, say, just once per paragraph? Gibbons is getting so much input in that last quote, we’re going to start thinking he’s an emotionless cyborg, sent from the future to ensure that the Internet gains self-awareness and kills us all. Or at least to keep taxes in check.

Anyway, Coleman seems like a nice person with good intentions, so let us very gently suggest that she and other transition team members aren’t really supposed to play an active role in making policy. (Boynton has already confessed that publicly.) The whole thing is more or less for show.

Oh, and one final nugget unearthed by Ball: The transition teams now number 196. Why, just four more people and you can say you’ve got "hundreds" of "inputters"!

» How cynical can John Kitchen, owner of a Fremont Street check-cashing business, truly be? Kitchen had the gall to suggest that the city — which advocated the lawsuit-plagued Fremont Street Experience and the failing Neonopolis — wasn’t going to succeed in creating "Fremont East," Las Vegas’ answer to the Gaslamp District in San Diego?

Have a little faith, man! The third time’s the charm! Meanwhile, in order to get a true comparison going, we at Various Things & Stuff will begin immediately lobbying our corporate overlords to open a San Diego bureau, from which we can daily visit the Gaslamp and other parts of that seaside burg and report back about all the things Las Vegas will probably never have. What about it, corporate overlords?

» And finally today, the Clark County Commission authorized county Manager Virginia Valentine to negotiate higher pay for the director of aviation, an obvious bid to get current director Randy Walker to stay in his job. (Walker has announced he’s leaving his post at McCarran to take a job with Carter & Burgess, a firm that’s received millions in McCarran contracts over the years, and will be a prime player in the new Ivanpah airport near Primm.)

After saying that the average salary for directors of the four airports in the country that are busier than McCarran (Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas) is $248,000, Valentine said she’d pitch a higher salary to Walker right after Christmas. Commissioners rushed to point out that the salary won’t come from tax dollars; instead, it will be paid by the enterprise fund at the airport that’s generated by airport concessions and airline fees.

Whew, that’s a relief! Thank goodness that no Las Vegas residents ever fly into or out of McCarran, or buy anything at the airport! Otherwise, we’d end up paying that salary, too!