LAS VEGAS — “Prostitution is rampant in Las Vegas,” said Bob Fisher, [pictured] whose Fisher & Associates Inc. handles publicity for the Chicken Ranch brothel in Pahrump.

There are mobile billboards, newspaper racks of smut and aggressive shills promoting women who will visit you in your hotel room, and it all involves a business that is illegal.

And just as in Los Angeles and New York and any other urban area, little seems to be done about it.

Now Fisher’s client, Kenneth Green, owner of the Chicken Ranch, has established Regulated Management LLC to combat what is seen by its originators as a scourge on Las Vegas’ image.

During a news conference here Friday, Fisher pointed to the press conference’s location at the Sahara Casino and Hotel as illustrative of the problem in bringing illegal prostitution to the public’s attention.

Out of eight possible sites for the press conference, he said, “six of them turned us down.”

Meanwhile, he and Green pointed out, the Legislature and even members of the religious community in the state seem to have no interest in the subject.

Fisher recalled one minister with whom he spoke, whose response was, “I really don’t have any passion for this.”

Fisher said he and Green have been working on the Regulated Management plan for about nine months with “no Pollyanna dreams that we’re going to wipe out illegal prostitution.”

But they think a start in that direction can be made through, on the one hand, public education and, on the other, public pressure on those officials who should be taking responsibility for it.

“This is not just a Las Vegas problem,” Green said. Despite it being an illegal business in virtually all the nation, he added, there are literally “millions of listings” available on Internet sites.

The results are problems involving health, crime, the economy, the community’s image, appearance and morale.

Given all that, Green asked himself rhetorically why nothing is being done and then answered the question: “No politician will broach the subject.”

In his view, he said, only Las Vegas’ Oscar Goodman and state Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, have tried to deal openly with prostitution in some way.

But when, for instance, Goodman opens his mouth, the “moral community” responds immediately by explaining its opposition to legalization.

No one ever gets around to discussing the problem of illegal prostitution, Green said.

As for the legislators, he continued, “They won’t even address the problem … It’s an unacceptable situation in Las Vegas right now. There has to be a better way.”

Referring to the deluge of prostitution come-ons in Vegas, he said, “It’s embarrassing. (Visitors) think it’s legal.”

He said that, among other things, illegal prostitution avoids “millions, if not hundreds of millions, of potential tax revenue.”

In a coincidental matter earlier in April, Coffin tried to win some legislative support for a bill that would tax legal prostitution, but even with the state’s budget likely to wind up $2 million short and support for the taxation plan from the Chicken Ranch, little was accomplished.

Green said much of the money that might go to gaming in Las Vegas and Carson City, and support legit industries revolving around the casinos, goes instead to underworld prostitutes and their pimps — an “enormous criminal enterprise” that goes on right in the state’s face.

Loretta Holt, the executive director of the Sin City Chamber of Commerce, said she’d like to see Las Vegas as the true “adult capital of the world” where prostitution might be promoted without embarrassment and without disease.

“Illegal prostitution has got to be abolished,” she said.

With the shortage of legal jobs becoming increasingly critical, she said, those facing unemployment go “out on the street, become independent and work for an illegal operation.”

Public awareness, she said, can be the starting point in combating the plague.

Also speaking out was Alexis, who was described as a “legal licensed courtesan” who works at the Chicken Ranch.

Having worked both legally and illegally, she said her present-day position is much better all around. “I was constantly looking over my shoulder” as an illegal prostitute, she said, “doing something ‘bad.'”

Referring to the recent news of the “Craigslist killer,” she said, “It’s really dangerous out there.”

Besides a major difference between the clientele worked by illegal prostitutes and contractors at the Chicken Ranch, she said, she also pays her fair share of income tax.

“I’m proud to do this legally at the Chicken Ranch,” Alexis said.

Meanwhile, said Green, “The politicians won’t even look at it. Nobody wants to recognize the problem.”

Green reacted abruptly to the first question he faced, responding, “You did what everybody always does — ‘Oh, you want to legalize it’ … The problem with illegal prostitution is it’s illegal.”

“Everyone admits it’s here,” said Fisher. But legislators don’t even want to admit it exists. “That’s incredible.”