City buries Metro deconsolidation issue

Erin Neff

Friday, Oct. 8, 1999 | 11:29 a.m.

Three weeks of political upheaval, job uncertainty and union muscle flexing have come to a relieving halt for all involved as Las Vegas officials shelved talk of deconsolidating Metro Police.

Mayor Oscar Goodman on Thursday finally said enough's enough to speculation that the city wanted to form its own police force when he quashed any future mention of the word deconsolidation and ordered his staff to remove it as an option from an efficiency study under way.

"Deconsolidation is a non-issue," Goodman said. "It is a dead issue. It is something that wherever it came from -- it's over."

The news spread rapidly and was greeted with cheers in Metro's squad rooms and with relief at the Clark County Government Center.

But the word didn't reach Councilman Michael McDonald, whom many believe responsible for pushing deconsolidation, until a news reporter reached him by phone at a Chicago airport.

"I'm happy this is behind us," McDonald, a former Metro cop, said. "I'm a proud member of the (Police Protective Association), and I support them 100 percent."

City Hall sources, however, paint a less amicable picture of what compelled the city to scrap talk of deconsolidation.

Some say McDonald "locked horns" over the deconsolidation issue with City Manager Virginia Valentine and Goodman in a heated exchange after Wednesday's morning council meeting.

Hundreds of Metro officers had picketed the meeting and publicly asked the council to calm their fears by saying no to deconsolidation. Although individual council members expressed support of Metro and vowed to protect police jobs, they stopped short of giving police union leaders a yes or no on the deconsolidation issue.

Reeling from public criticism, McDonald reportedly told Valentine and Goodman he would be the first to definitively say no to deconsolidation.

Some believe that would allow McDonald to recover unscathed from weeks of scrutiny of his feud with Sheriff Jerry Keller and his initial support of a city-only police force.

But Goodman got to the media first by announcing deconsolidation's death at his weekly press conference while McDonald was headed for a Notre Dame football weekend in South Bend, Ind.

Keller said Thursday he didn't care how any of the deconsolidation talk surfaced or ended now that the issue was over.

"The announcement today by the mayor that he will not support deconsolidation gives all of us at Metro great hope and a tremendous sense of relief that the men and women of this department can get back to doing what we do best," Keller said during a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Goodman said he was compelled to kill deconsolidation after Keller told him early Thursday in the City Hall parking garage that his officers were being distracted by the issue.

Metro Lt. Joe Greenwood said he believed the union and public response to leaked news of the city study helped sway the political tide.

"We've come together on this and when an issue of this magnitude comes, you don't consider the cost of our time," said Greenwood, chairman of the Police Managers and Supervisors Association. "It has the same importance of any other challenge."

The Police Protective Association earmarked $25,000 of its members' dues to fight the effort and will likely push for state legislation barring a simple majority council vote from breaking up Metro.

"This is not an issue to be taken over whimsy," said Keller, adding his support for legislation. "We cannot become divorced over socks in the hallway."

While the break-up is no longer an issue, the compelling financial questions underlying the internal study still linger.

"It'll probably raise more questions than it answers," Valentine said of the study still being conducted. "I think we have a good story to tell."

Valentine wouldn't elaborate on specific findings of the in-house study, but she did say it focuses on the allocation of resources and cost in the joint city-county funded Metro Police force.

Keller pledged to work with the city when its study is finished to help resolve any outstanding issues.

"I think we just go back as though this never happened and go ahead with plans to improve Metro," County Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury said.

The city's share of Metro funding is $73 million, plus a $17 million tax override to finance a police manpower bond issue. The city spends roughly 25 percent of its budget on Metro.

After Goodman's announcement, all of the City Council members individually said they were relieved, but vowed to continue studying the funding issue.

"I think it's my duty as an elected official to look at the money," Councilman Gary Reese said. "It was never my intent to look at deconsolidation."

Councilman Larry Brown said he supports taking deconsolidation "off the table and being removed as an option."

"I have from day one separated these issues," Brown said. "Everybody's questioned the deconsolidation, very few have questioned our efforts to be more accountable."

Brown said he also favored legislation requiring a public vote to break apart the 23-year-old consolidated police force.

Councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald said she considered the past three weeks a difficult way to focus on accountability.

"I also believe that there will probably be things that will come out of the report that we will be able to take back to the sheriff, take back to the county as far as things that need to be resolved," Boggs McDonald said. "I'm glad that that message has been communicated."