Columnist Jon Ralston: For McDonald, damage is done

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 11:37 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

SO MICHAEL MCDONALD is guilty and Mayor Oscar Goodman and the rest of 'em are innocent.

Now that was easy. It's all so simple, isn't it? Such are the headlines from the state and city ethics tribunals last week, where McDonald was (again) found to have lobbied on behalf of his boss and Goodman and three others were absolved of any improper conduct in greasing the way for Sig Rogich to convert his old offices into a topless bar.

The contrast between the hearings was stark. The state panel's inquisition into McDonald lasted all day, showed board members carefully eliciting the necessary information to hang McDonald and produced a fair, if flawed, result. The city's review board hearing lasted less than an hour, featured four elected officials who could have earned their Screen Actor's Guild cards and a group of disinterested and flummoxed panelists. One hearing was heartening, the other a farce. What's most clear is that to have state and local ethics boards is silly; if one acts, the other shouldn't. Better yet -- get rid of the local one.

Since the city ethics review board took so little time and featured the elected officials preening for the cameras and the panel acting as if it were inert, I'll waste no time here on that hearing. The quartet may not have behaved unethically in helping Rogich; but their holier-than-thou strutting upon the stage on Thursday was like a visual emetic. There are, however, some aspects of the state Ethics Commission hearing worth noting.

I know well the lament. If these folks do nothing less than take out machetes and hack up the guilty party, the public's bloodlust is not satisfied. Yes, McDonald was cleared on the charges he tried to influence the process on behalf of topless bar owner Rick Rizzolo and to hurt Rogich. Oh, he did do that, as several commissioners pointed out. But the evidence didn't rise to the level of a violation -- they are constrained by the laws as they are written, the public forgets.

And while he was found guilty of violating the statutes by helping his employer, Larry Scheffler, make good on an investment in the Las Vegas Sportspark, McDonald's transgressions were found not to be willful. Two points here are relevant. First, the panel was flat-out wrong -- at least the three members who voted it was not willful were. Willful, according to Webster's, means done deliberately or intentionally. Not only did McDonald know what he was doing as he tried to get the city to bail out Scheffler, he was warned at least a couple of times that he was behaving improperly. If he wasn't willful, no one ever has been.

But second, the fact that he was convicted is what's important. He broke the law, folks. City and state laws. Get it? The issue of punishment will always be debated. But the cumulative political effect will be devastating.

And consider how some of the thoughtful commissioners got right to the nub of what McDonald did: He used his government position to try to direct taxpayer money -- with no benefit to the taxpayer -- to his boss.

Several talked about how clear it was that McDonald was advocating on behalf of Scheffler inside the city, and not for the public. But Chairman Pete Bernhard was the most thoughtful and pointed, and he even echoed the argument that Metro made when it recommended charges be filed against McDonald: that McDonald's salary from Scheffler actually showed he was acting not just in his boss' but in his own financial interest. A few dead-on Bernhardisms:

* "All of that is something that an ordinary member of the public would not have access to and the unwarranted preference comes right back to you. You benefit yourself by trying to please your employer ... you put that ahead of your public duty."

* "We never got an answer from anybody that this was a good economic deal in the best interest of the taxpayers of Las Vegas (paying millions of dollars to Scheffler and his partner) ... Your primary concern was that the investors get their money back."

* (Quoting from the ethics statute) "A public office is a public trust and held for the sole benefit of the people ... A public officer must commit himself to avoid a conflict between private interest and those of the public."

Bernhard, although he did not vote to find McDonald had willfully violated the law, pointed out that McDonald had months to seek an ethics panel advisory opinion on whether his behavior was ethical. And he did not.

Commissioner Skip Avansino, who was equally critical, risibly praised McDonald for being "hands-on." Oh, his hands were on all right -- strangling the system to squeeze money out of it for Scheffler. The facts of this case have been out there for six months, as has McDonald's guilt. Now it's up to a judge next month, or the voters, through a recall or McDonald's re-election, to decide the proper punishment.