Columnist Jon Ralston: Mack assumes role of McDonald

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 4:27 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

"I hope it didn't come from him, because someone who's so ethically challenged should mind his own business." -- Michael Mack,

Jan. 19, 2001

GLAD TO SEE things are back to normal at City Hall.

After two tribunals and a judge fumigated City Hall, essentially eradicating Michael McDonald from the scene, the stench has returned, with the focus this time on another councilman with the same initials.

In January Mack was speaking about the chances of McDonald being behind an ethics complaint filed against him. But now Mack must confront an ethics morass where he is using temporary amnesia, poor business oversight and a busy campaign to explain how he didn't realize that a $60,000 loan had not been paid back to a man whose interests he seemed to be representing as a councilman.

McDonald was rightly barbecued on a media rotisserie for months for trying to use city taxpayer funds to bail his employer out of a sinking investment -- he was found guilty by two ethics panels and now has potentially fatal political wounds.

During his travails, McDonald regularly whispered that he was being publicly flayed for what is business as usual at City Hall. That is: They all do it.

How he must be smirking now.

The facts here are awful for Mack, and he has explained himself with the verbal dexterity of Elmer Fudd. If this is all there is, he can go with the defense that so many other elected officials have when confronted with questionable conduct: "The Better Dumb Than Venal Defense." He's got that down. But if there's more -- that is, if an aggressive attorney suing the city uncovers any more strange loans or financial relationships that relate to city business -- he'll be the first MM to lose his elected title.

Let me distill:

In December 1999, before Mack was on the council, Courtesy car magnate Joe Scala lobbied against a Town Center expansion -- he owns a bunch of land out that way in the northwest.

Shortly thereafter, Mack was appointed when the council was expanded.

When another car dealer, John Staluppi, wanted to build a Nissan dealership in Town Center, Mack wrote a letter: "I can inform you this is a routine matter that both the city's staff and Planning Commission have recommended approval."

Then, late last year, Mack took a loan from Scala. He included the transaction on his February 2001 disclosure form, along with 11 other loans.

The loan from Scala was for $60,000, which might have affected an ordinary person's ability to be impartial, but not Mack's, he says. (That explanation raises the question of how much those other loans are worth.)

Shortly thereafter, the councilman's attitude on the Nissan dealership changed. It wasn't the $60,000, though, he says. Why? He told the Sun: "(When I wrote the letter) I didn't have a good chance to think it through, and I changed my mind. I thought one car dealership would not hurt the integrity of Town Center ... but I changed my mind and I have that ability." (Perhaps Elmer Fudd was too generous.)

A lawsuit against the city filed by Staluppi alleges that Mack and Larry Brown essentially tried to broker a deal between the two car dealers. So Mack was trying to help a guy make money with whom he enjoyed a financial relationship? Sound familiar to the other MM, who was pilloried for trying to help someone with whom he had a financial connection?

Mack now says he forgot about the loan because he was campaigning so hard and thought his business folks had taken care of it. Really? Wouldn't he have had to sign something? What does this say about his acumen, if it is true? On the credibility scale, this ranks somewhere between "I am not a crook" and "I didn't know it was that Gay Reber."

Mack and Brown say they voted against Staluppi to maintain the integrity (nice choice of words considering the context) of Town Center -- just as McDonald maintained he was trying to preserve the, ahem, integrity of the Sportspark by lobbying on behalf of his employer.

At least McDonald had the good sense to abstain on the vote. Mack not only did not recuse himself, but, like McDonald for his boss, he also appears to have acted as an extension of Scala.

This is following the normal trajectory of such stories -- ethics complaints, legal actions, political deflection. No doubt Mack blames McDonald for his current media plight, just as McDonald once blamed Mack and others for his. If Mack were to point a finger at his colleague, I wouldn't be surprised to hear McDonald reply:

"I hope it didn't come from him, because someone who's so ethically challenged should mind his own business."