Columnist Jon Ralston: Finding a suitable punishment is tough

Wednesday, March 21, 2001 | 9:20 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

NOW I KNOW how Bill Murray felt in "Groundhog Day."

That was the movie in which Murray woke up day after day to the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the same events -- the same conversations, the same people, the same beginning and ending.

That was the feeling shared Tuesday by most Fourth Estaters, witnesses and certainly embattled Councilman Michael McDonald as the third iteration of Sportsparkgate played out before Judge Jim Mahan, who today is likely to rule that McDonald should not be thrown out of office for trying to bail his boss out of a bad business deal with the city's money.

Oh, the scene was marginally different. Instead of ethics commission hearings, the setting was a courtroom. The proceedings were sparsely attended, as were the ethics panel deliberations, by a handful of gadflies.

McDonald, given support by a dark-suited, tough-looking group of friends in the first row, was subdued and intense next to his attorney, Rick Wright. And the media folks were seated in the jury box, which was metaphorically accurate for this case.

The testimony changed very little from the two ethics hearings, which found that McDonald had broken city and state laws by lobbying colleagues and staffers to use millions of taxpayer dollars to buy the listing Sportspark, rather than let the lender foreclose, so his boss, Larry Scheffler, and Scheffler's ex-business partner, Linda Fernandez, could get their money out before the ship went under.

Despite Wright's usual attempts to make this seem as if McDonald was merely participating, as he used to do on Metro's budgets when he was a cop despite a conflict, the evidence has always showed (and did again) that he went well beyond discussion to actual lobbying. The same three key witnesses -- City Manager Virginia Valentine, Councilman Larry Brown and Mayor Oscar Goodman -- provided the same testimony that implicated him the last two times. McDonald was warned about his conflict but continued behind the scenes to push for the city to make the deal. End of story.

But this is no longer about the crime, it is about the punishment. And that is where Mahan comes in, having to decide whether this case should be the precedent whereby an elected official is thrown out of office for civil malfeasance.

Wright and McDonald can fuzz up all they want whether the councilman actually advocated for Scheffler -- but those facts are clear. He did. But what's equally clear are two points that surely will not elude Mahan, especially since Wright alluded to them Tuesday and surely will again today in his closing arguments.

First is that McDonald, who was elected twice overwhelmingly and whose ward said no to a Steve Miller-led recall last year, should not be thrown out of office through a process controlled by an appointive ethics board. If the voters of his ward still want him, they should have him. (Now a non-Steve Miller-led recall might just succeed, if the money were there. But that's another story.)

Second, think of the standard that this would set and the message this would send if McDonald were actually tossed for this transgression. The state Ethics Commission undercut the case by not finding the obviously willful violations to be willful, thus bolstering Wright's arguments. So if McDonald is thrown out of office for acts an ethics panel deemed not to be willful, what does that say? And if those enmeshed in other cases, most notably Airportgate, where county commissioners abused their power to funnel lucrative contracts to cronies, weren't booted, why should McDonald be kicked out?

It would be a scary precedent. If that's what malfeasance is in the eye of the law, then we better get the trials set for a few others, folks. At the conclusion of "Groundhog Day," Murray is liberated from his redundant prison by true love, which changes his behavior and thus his life.

Ah, only in the movies?

McDonald, too, surely will be set free. But whether he will have learned any lessons from the ordeal will play out in short order. Most of his colleagues will not see the climax, as when Murray got the girl in the film, as a happy ending.

And the sequel -- McDonald's revenge -- will be more like the seminal baptismal scene in "The Godfather," as Don Michael sends his minions out to dispatch his enemies during the ceremony. That look I thought I saw in McDonald's eyes Tuesday was the glare of vengeance.

Welcome back to City Hall, Don Michael.