Ex-county building inspector indicted

Gary Thompson, Bill Gang and Adrienne Packer

Thursday, May 20, 1999 | 12:36 p.m.

A 13-count grand jury indictment charges former Clark County building inspector Marcus McAnally with falsifying inspections at Strip casinos and two private homes, including his father's.

The indictment alleges McAnally altered the records to backdate approvals of several remodeling and renovation projects at the Strip resorts and at the homes of his father and a friend, contractor Tommy Ford, whose company did at least some of the work.

But in a recent interview with the Sun, McAnally accused supervising building inspectors of similar acts, and said the investigation of him stems from his refusal to solicit "contributions" from contractors for events sponsored by his bosses.

Deputy District Attorney Valerie Adair said the evidence against McAnally was uncovered through searches of his computer during the past few months.

Ford isn't a target of prosecutors, she said. But district attorney's office employees said others may yet face criminal or administrative charges in the probe.

The charges against McAnally alleged he created false documents approving construction projects, using the names of the actual inspectors assigned to the jobs.

But a security program installed in the building department's computer system tracked the access code of the person originating documents, no matter what names were on the resulting reports.

The questionable documents were shown to the inspectors whose names appeared on them, and they asserted they hadn't been the authors.

In the Sun interview two weeks ago, McAnally accused building department supervisors of similar acts.

He said he had been targeted by supervisors because he had refused to ask contractors on jobs sites to buy "sponsorships" to a golf tournament sponsored by the Southern Nevada Chapter of the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO).

"It's a conflict of interest to go to a site to perform an inspection and ask the companies whose work you have to approve if they'll help sponsor a golf tournament run by (building department supervisors)", he said.

He also alleged the supervisors ordered inspectors to seek sponsorships from contractors for a series of ICBO "educational seminars," where some supervisors were paid speakers.

He asserted one supervisor asked a department electrical inspector to install four ceiling fans in a relative's home. When the inspector balked, the supervisor told him to find an electrician to do the job, and didn't offer to pay for the work until the McAnally complained, he said.

And he presented the Sun with documents pulled off county computers he said showed that other building inspectors had backdated inspection approvals at the home of a county commissioner -- essentially the same charges made against him in the indictment.

Building Department Director Robert Weber said today many of McAnally's allegations had been investigated as part of a "whistle blower's complaint."

"Our human resources department scheduled a hearing on this and determined there were no merits to it," Weber said. "There was no substance to what he claimed."

Weber said charges in the indictment regarding the Sands involved remodeling projects at the old hotel-casino and don't relate to construction problems at the Venetian, the resort being completed at the same site.

He noted that McAnally's father had been hired by Lehrer McGovern Bovis, manager of the Venetian construction project that has been marred by the deaths of three workers and by numerous delays in receiving temporary certificates of occupancy from county inspectors due to safety concerns.

"We hired the ICBO to do an independent evaluation of complaints regarding the Venetian," Weber said. "Based on their data and our staff evaluation of it, we went back to the contractor and issued correction notices" for areas that had already cleared safety inspections.

But Weber said McAnally wasn't involved in the Venetian approvals.

"Marc wasn't assigned to the Venetian. He had a different area of the county. He was involved in one meeting at the Venetian, but a supervisor told him not to do that in the future because we considered it a conflict of interest."

The charges against McAnally involve inspections of renovation projects at four hotel-casinos, including the former Sands, Bally's, Harrah's and the Tropicana. Other charges involve a slab inspection on a Homestead Road house owned by the defendant's father and a plumbing inspection on a Russell Road building owned by Ford.

It has been a convoluted trail that wound its way to Wednesday's indictment of McAnally -- a former Metro Police officer -- by a Clark County Grand Jury.

In 1998, when McAnally complained about his reassignment from inspecting safety systems at Strip resorts to other areas of the county, disgruntled co-workers accused him of "questionable professional conduct," according to district attorney's office investigators.

The complaints included allegations that he had obtained building materials for his personal use from contractors and demanded promotional jackets from casinos such as the Frontier and the Hard Rock while he was inspecting projects.

McAnally denied those charges, saying he'd been offered a leather jacket by one casino operator but had given it to a co-worker.

Those contentions didn't reach a level where criminal charges were warranted because there was no evidence that the gifts were connected to favored treatment on subsequent inspections, officials said.

There were no allegations that McAnally demanded or accepted cash.

Likewise, there are no indications that safety is an issue in any of the jobs since the casino work by Tommy Ford Contractors involved remodeling and not major construction, the officials said.

They said the alleged falsifications involved final inspections and that any potentially dangerous issues had been passed in earlier, legitimate inspections.

It was because of the co-worker complaints that investigators delved into the building department's computer records and discovered what is alleged to be the evidence that McAnally falsified building inspections.

McAnally has been summoned for arraignment on June 3 in District Judge John McGroarty's courtroom on the charges of criminal wrongdoing that allegedly occurred between Jan. 7, 1994, and April 9, 1997.

In the indictment, McAnally is charged with injury to, concealment or falsification of records or papers by a public officer. The felony counts carry the possibility of up to four years in prison on each count, Adair said.

Assistant Building Director Ron Lynn said that after McAnally was placed on administrative leave last Jan. l, the county's probe intensified.

Building inspectors are slowly making their way through the list of hotel-casinos where McAnally is accused of backdating construction approvals. In some cases, inspectors have found discrepancies in paperwork and in structural quality, Lynn said.

Although he wouldn't go into detail, Lynn emphasized Wednesday that none of the flaws discovered thus far was life-threatening but were simply not up to the county's building code.

"We are here to assure the public's safety, and we are going to be ultra-cautious," Lynn said. "If there is no problem, all the better. If there is, we work in conjunction with the owners to rectify the problem."

Lynn said McAnally had spent most of his 10 years with the county handling projects along the Las Vegas Strip. He was removed from his jurisdiction in 1998, when the building officials opted to begin rotating inspectors.

"We rotate so we have someone checking someone else's work," he said. "It's a much, much better system and it's working quite well."

The building division updated its computer system before 1996, enhancing its security element.

The indictment handed down Wednesday lists 47 witnesses, one of whom is Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone.

Malone said he was introduced to McAnally by a mutual friend at Metro Police when Malone was elected to the county commission. He said McAnally contacted him when he was taken off the Strip and complained because he felt his replacement was less experienced.

Concerned about the allegation, Malone contacted Weber. When Weber told Malone of the building division's new rotating policy, the commissioner dropped the matter.

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