South Lake Tahoe mayor goes to jail for harassment after bar altercation

South Lake Tahoe Mayor Cody Bass will do at least 10 days in jail after he was found guilty of harassment last month. 

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On Tuesday, Judge Richard Glasson sentenced Bass to serve 45 days in jail, Chelsea Mazza, the chief deputy district attorney for Douglas County in Nevada, said.

Bass will begin serving 10 days at the Douglas County Jail immediately, Mazza said. The remaining 35 days are suspended for two years, so long as Bass follows conditions of his release. He cannot visit the casino corridor between Kahle Drive and the California state line, and he must stay sober and will be subject to testing. He cannot contact the victim and must pay a fine of $1,127.

South Lake Tahoe has experienced a volatile year on the City Council. 

Bass was arrested last fall after being involved in a late-night altercation with a bouncer outside of AleWorx, a bar in Stateline, Nevada, near the casinos. The incident on Sept. 25, 2025, was captured on the bar’s security camera footage and body cameras worn by Douglas County Sheriff’s Office deputies. 

Days after Bass was arrested, in October of last year, former Mayor Tamara Wallace publicly admitted to embezzling money from a local Presbyterian church. 

Wallace’s case also moved forward on Tuesday when the U.S. attorney’s office charged her with one count of wire fraud for allegedly embezzling up to $390,000 from the church. She could face up to 20 years in prison.

At Bass’s sentencing, attorney Adam Spicer spoke on behalf of his client in court and said that Bass wished he had taken the stand during his trial to share his version of what happened that night.

Bass has said that he was walking past AleWorx when he encountered bouncer Bob Hoyopatubbi standing in front of the bar. Footage shows the two men having a conversation that escalated into a physical and verbal altercation, with the bouncer kicking at Bass. 

Bass maintains that he was provoked. “I was in fact who got assaulted,” he wrote in a social media post after the altercation. 

Bouncer Hoyopatubbi said in a witness statement that he had been harassed by Bass for months. Previous reports state that Bass had threatened the doorman that night. 

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Bass was originally arrested on charges of assault, trespassing and harassment, but the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office dropped the assault charge, and at the verdict last month, Bass was found not guilty of trespassing.

Spicer asked the judge to delay Bass’s jail time until after his time in office is up, but the judge said the 10-day sentence would begin immediately.

Bass’s role as South Lake Tahoe’s mayor complicated the sentencing. 

“He is the mayor of South Lake Tahoe, responsible for our entire community,” Glasson said, according to South Tahoe Now.. “… How should we treat Mr. Bass as a convicted person?”

In a statement, Mazza said: “The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office is committed to seeking justice in every case, and we believe justice was served by the sentence imposed in this matter.”

SFGATE reached out to Bass for comment but did not receive a response before the time of publication.

In January, Bass told his fellow City Council members that he would step down from his role as mayor if he was proven to be at fault for the charges he was arrested on.

“It’s just not healthy to have this kind of chaos where our leadership is in the news for criminal indictments,” Council member Scott Robbins said at a City Council meeting in January, when Bass was sworn in as mayor.