Columnist Jon Ralston: City politics still lurks in Dark Ages

Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001 | 9:47 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 through e-mail at ralston@ vegas.com

FEW STORIES in this business are black and white. This one is -- literally Black and white.

As in Randy Black, the developer with parcels across the city and tentacles extending deep inside Las Vegas City Hall.

As in a black eye for the city, where the darkness of the shadow of the Good Old Boys Inc. land deal of a decade past has returned.

And as in a story that blackens the reputation of local governments and their employees across the valley, sending a message of access and juice still reigning supreme.

It is a culture that was exposed 10 years ago when then-Mayor Ron Lurie and then-Manager Ashley Hall invested with some prominent developers and community figures and a few months later no longer had their government jobs. This, in some ways, is even more insidious as Black and other well-connected developers and consultants invited key city staffers into land investments. City officials, who for years have looked the other way and thus tacitly condoned these investments, say they have seen the light.

"That kind of relationship is unsatisfactory," declared Mayor Oscar Goodman. "People who work in the city should not have private deals with those they judge."

Well, no kidding.

"There's no evidence that Bob has violated any of our ethics laws," said City Manager Virginia Valentine, who quickly added, "I don't think it's proper." Really?

Valentine said she is researching with City Attorney Brad Jerbic a policy prohibiting city employees from making investments. Her office also is receiving other disclosure forms of city employees to see if there are any other land mines.

This one is explosive enough. First, Deputy Planning Director Bob Genzer, who is slated to be ratified by the council next week as the new planning boss, is one of the three staffers. When he interviewed for the top planning job, Genzer informed Deputy City Manager Doug Selby of the Black land deal, which also includes partners in the omnipresent engineering firm VTN Nevada, which appears on virtually every city agenda. He said he saw no problem with the investment, which began in 1995, because Black has little business these days in front of the city and the land is in Mesquite.

That, of course, misses the point. Black and his associates may have business in the city and they certainly have better access now to Genzer than Joe Juiceless might -- especially if Mr. Juiceless wanted something done on a parcel adjoining a Black parcel.

Black also, quite coincidentally, has two other key staffers in the deal, which now has time-share units near the Casablanca Hotel. Deputy Public Works Director John McNellis and plans checker Chuck Turk also are among the 34 investors in the consortium.

McNellis also has invested with prominent developer Thomas Bodensteiner in something called Northwest Partners Ltd., which owns land in the city. And listen to the description in McNellis' disclosure form about the land, which it invested in about the same time as Good Old Boys Inc. was being exposed:

"The partnership's intent was to purchase unimproved vacant property, to install infrastructure to make the land more valuable and to then sell improved development parcels to homebuilders." Am I in an alternate universe here, folks? McNellis did not return phone calls; nor did Turk.

But what were city administrators and elected officials thinking by allowing this nonsense to go on all these years? The perception -- if not the reality -- is horrific. For instance, Genzer, by all accounts, is a fine employee and well-qualified for the planning director's spot. Who will believe the reality that city officials conducted a thorough national search -- especially since no one else was ever flown to town because they weren't qualified. Local contestants were scared off by the political capriciousness of council members and by rollover managers who have allowed planning directors at City Hall to be ground up when developers (read: major campaign contributors) didn't get their way.

Black, it appears, had a better idea. He wouldn't return phone calls, either, so I couldn't ask him if he lobbied for Genzer to get the top job. I have no doubt.

Can hardly blame him for not commenting, though. What could he say? That he chose Genzer, McNellis and Turk to invest because he liked them so much, not that they are strategically placed inside city government?

It may not be the kind of insider trading that characterized the Good Old Boys Inc. scandal. But these latest revelations are still a corruption of the process and reveal a culture all too unchanged from a decade ago.