Bills urge change in ethics code

Diana Sahagun

Monday, July 2, 2001 | 10:50 a.m.

Las Vegas Councilwoman Lynette Boggs McDonald, in just her second month as an appointed official in 1999, drafted new bills to strengthen the city's ethics code after identifying flaws in the system.

Two years later, having endured three recent ethics hearings herself, Boggs McDonald continues to work to enact tougher regulations that guarantee a fair outcome.

Boggs McDonald this week will introduce two new bills. One would do away with the Las Vegas Ethics Commission, and the other would call for massive changes to the code as written. The City Council will choose between the two in August.

"Either we need to throw out the entire process or we need to reform the process," Boggs McDonald said.

The first bill gives the council the option of scrapping the city's ethics commission, leaving complaints to be heard by the Nevada Ethics Commission only. Las Vegans can now file ethics complaints to both the city and state ethics commissions.

The second bill would give the local five-member appointed board more authority. It also would provide officials who are accused a greater chance at obtaining due process. Boggs said she would rather see the system changed than discarded altogether.

One of the changes would be to tighten up the language to allow city residents only to file ethics complaints. In the month approaching April's primary race, Boggs McDonald was hit with three ethics complaints, which were filed to the city's ethics board, the state's ethics commission and the Nevada Secretary of State Election Division. The complaints were lodged by a Henderson and a Clark County resident, both of whom had ties to her political opponent, Mark Solomon.

Boggs McDonald was ultimately victorious, as the commissions ruled she did nothing wrong by classifying a trip to Notre Dame as a political contribution. But she never had a chance to face her accusers, who didn't attend any of the hearings. Boggs McDonald proposes a complaint should be dismissed if the accuser doesn't attend the hearing.

She also is frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the board. Mayor Oscar Goodman, who shares her concerns, criticized the board in February, when he and three members of the City Council appeared before it. In April he questioned whether there is even a need for the board.

If the board does remain, Boggs McDonald said, it should have the authority to subpoena witnesses. Council members should also be able to present evidence and question their accusers, she said.

"I think that those who stand accused need to have a better way of being able to defend themselves," she said.

Boggs McDonald also proposes the city waive jurisdiction if a complaint is also filed at the state level. In the ethics cases involving Boggs McDonald, the same complaint was filed to the both the city and state ethics boards.

"Until I went through the process myself I never understood the magnitude of the flaws that were inherent in the system," she said. "I think that the original intent (of the board) was a good one ... but now it just becomes yet another way of revenge and payback of one's political enemies."

Boggs McDonald on Thursday is also scheduled to introduce a new bill that would reduce by 35 percent the amount of adult inventory necessary to classify a bookstore as an adult store. As it stands, if 51 percent of a bookstore's merchandise is composed of adult material the business is restricted to industrial areas.

For several years the city fought the owners of Hot Stuff Adult Bookstore, which opened in a commercial area near Charleston and Decatur boulevards. Investigators with the city's Business Licensing Division found that more than 51 percent of the merchandise was adult, and officials spent more than two years in a successful attempt to shut down the store, which remains closed.

Michael Stein, a first amendment lawyer who represented the bookstore owners, said the intent of the 51 percent requirement was to state that, if a majority of a store's inventory is adult, it should be classified as such.

Even with the 51 percent restriction, he said, the process is unfair because it does not define inventory or how to calculate it. He said the 35 percent reduction is unconstitutional.

Stein said there is no logic regarding why 35 percent amounts to too much adult material for a business to have a commercial location when that number is compared to any percentage that does not constitute a majority.