McDonald set for ethics challenge

Erin Neff

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000 | 11:57 a.m.

Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald will enter Thursday's ethics hearing with an unblemished record of victories against similar cases.

And if other recent state Ethics Commission rulings are any indication, McDonald will emerge as a winner again after this week's latest bout.

Even his challenger, Steve Miller, thinks that will be the case, because he places little faith in the state Ethics Commission.

"What they do is not going to surprise me," said Miller, a former city councilman who filed the latest ethics complaint against McDonald. "Based on their past performance, I think they're going to shoot the messenger again instead of addressing the real problem."

Miller thinks the real problem is McDonald's failure to disclose his relationships with executives and employees of Silver State Disposal Services Inc. prior to a 1999 vote.

McDonald says Miller is the real problem. But he still plans an ardent defense.

"We're approaching it with the same seriousness as anything that's ever been brought before," McDonald said.

On Thursday, two members of the state Ethics Commission will hold a hearing to determine whether enough evidence exists to proceed with a hearing of the full commission.

Two main questions will be explored.

First, did McDonald make proper disclosures before a July 12, 1999, vote to extend Silver State's exclusive trash-hauling contract until 2021?

And secondly, did McDonald or his attorney provide misleading information to the Ethics Commission when it first considered the matter last November?

McDonald is friends with Silver State President Steve Kalish and with the company's attorney, Robert Groesbeck.

He also dates Silver State employee Jennifer Simich.

Silver State and its related entities gave $36,800 in campaign contributions and Kalish threw a fund-raiser for McDonald at his bar.

Miller did not attend that November hearing in Carson City. However, after reading newspaper accounts of the hearing, Miller said he was troubled by statements made by McDonald's attorney, Louis Palazzo.

Palazzo said that McDonald and Simich did have a romantic relationship in early 1999, but were not romantically involved at the time of the July vote.

Those statements seem to contradict the many times Simich and McDonald have been seen holding hands, kissing or hugging in public from last June's election-night party for Councilman Gary Reese to the recent Martin Luther King Jr. Day banquet at Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.

Proving the relationship does not provide the Ethics Commission with evidence that McDonald benefited from those ties.

Last week the commission voted to dismiss a case against Clark County building administrators, saying that although their behavior "created the appearance of impropriety," they did not benefit personally or financially.

Miller said he thinks Thursday's hearing will have a similar result.

"They're probably going to throw it out and levy a fine on me for bringing the request," Miller said.

Miller was fined by the Ethics Commission in 1998 for filing a frivolous complaint against then-Mayor Jan Laverty Jones. He has never paid the $2,500 fine.

McDonald himself is no stranger to ethics boards.

When he was first elected to the City Council in 1995, a city resident filed a request with the city's Ethics Review Board asking if McDonald could serve on the council because he was a police officer at the time.

McDonald prevailed in that case. The Ethics Commission also dismissed a case in 1998 in which Miller alleged McDonald and two other councilmen acted improperly when they voted against a restaurant application.

The Ethics Commission also dismissed Miller's original complaint in the Silver State matter last November.

Miller has twice lost elections to McDonald.