On Valentine’s Day, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement – better known as “The Mob Museum” – will open its doors. The museum will function as a shrine to two of the most shameful blemishes on America: organized crime and government waste.
The museum’s focus on the mafia and law enforcement agencies that brought them down is obvious. What isn’t evident at the glitzy new museum is the fact that hardworking taxpayers were shaken down to fund the tourist trap. In total, politicians devoured $42 million in local, state and federal tax money to build The Mob Museum.
Serving as part tourist attraction, part downtown revitalization venture and part vanity project for former Sin City Mayor Oscar Goodman, The Mob Museum has become synonymous with pork barrel spending and irresponsible government in a time when many families are struggling to make ends meet.
Las Vegas residents and visitors are on the hook for the lion’s share of the museum’s cost, but $2.7 million in federal handouts means that all American taxpayers are forced to pick up part of the tab – even if they never step foot inside. Under the guise of historic preservation (the museum is housed in an 80-year-old former federal courthouse), federal taxpayers funded a $1.9 million giveaway to the museum from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a $532,043 “Save America’s Treasures” grant and a $250,000 subsidy from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Despite the substantial federal tax dollars that have poured in to subsidize the facility, The Mob Museum is probably the only pork project in history better known for government handouts that it didn’t get.
Following a pronouncement by Oscar Goodman that he planned to use $55 million of the city’s federal stimulus payout to bankroll the construction of The Mob Museum, the museum quickly became a symbol of wasteful spending in the stimulus plan. In an effort to distance themselves from the museum and other contentious stimulus pork projects, the U.S. Senate quickly voted to prevent stimulus funds from going to casinos, zoos, golf courses, stadiums and museums.
It’s not surprising that so many Senators didn’t want their names associated with this project. After all, ghoulish and offensive items such as the barber’s chair that mob boss Albert Anastasia was sitting in when he was gunned down are among the museum’s featured displays.
Undeterred by this rare display of fiscal responsibility and rational behavior by Congress, Goodman, a former defense attorney for some of the most famous mobsters in Vegas history, took it on himself to pillage city coffers to fund his pet project. When Goodman left office, his wife, Carolyn, took over as Las Vegas mayor and continued the spending.
The Goodmans and other city leaders ignored the fact that if building a museum dedicated to the mafia in a seedy area of town was a winning proposition, investors would have funded the project long ago. Now with The Mob Museum set to open, taxpayers face another costly reality; if the museum fails to generate enough revenue to pay for operating expenses, tax dollars will almost certainly be used to bail the museum out time and time again.
When the museum opens on February 14 – a date chosen to coincide with the 83rd anniversary of Chicago’s bloody St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – visitors willing to shell out the $18 admission fee can get a glimpse of the final resting place of many of their hard-earned dollars. One of the first things they will see is the bloodstained, bullet-riddled wall against which seven men were killed during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The wall, purchased at taxpayers’ expense, is both a grim reminder of mafia violence and a macabre memorial to wasted tax dollars.