Judge: Issue before court was limited

Erin Neff

Thursday, March 22, 2001 | 11:20 a.m.

District Court Judge Jim Mahan said he was not ruling on whether Las Vegas Councilman Michael McDonald's behavior was criminal, unethical or unseemly.

"The issue before the court is limited," Mahan said just prior to announcing his decision Wednesday. "I simply find that this did not rise to the level of malfeasance."

With that, nine months of ethics charges, hearings, political strife and a recall effort ended with the same result -- McDonald in office.

"We've never left City Hall through this whole thing," McDonald said. "I will continue to work for the constituents."

It was McDonald's testimony that swayed Mahan the most. Attorney Frank Cremen established a case showing McDonald lobbied city officials to buy the financially-troubled recreation center in an effort to free his boss of a bad investment.

But McDonald said he was merely trying to help constituents by getting a new operator of Sportspark. His attorney, Richard Wright, also successfully argued that McDonald thought he could participate on a matter from which he had to abstain.

In 1998, City Attorney Brad Jerbic told McDonald he could discuss, but not vote, on the Metro Police budget. McDonald was a police officer at the time.

"There's no evidence to contradict Exhibit G (the transcript from that 1998 council meeting) or Councilman McDonald's understanding of what he could do," Mahan said.

Cremen said McDonald's behavior went beyond mere discussion or casual participation.

Wright argued the city Ethics Review Board was wrong to even bring the case, and referred to the November 2000 hearing into the McDonald matter as "a charade."

But Wright's most successful argument was based on state law and a 1918 state Supreme Court decision in the only prior attempt to invoke the malfeasance law to remove an official from office.

Then-Chief Justice Patrick McCarran said applying the malfeasance statute is "an extreme and extraordinary measure."

For that reason, Wright said, he did not think McDonald should be removed from office "at the whim of the Ethics Review Board."