Friday, Feb. 15, 2002 | 4:54 a.m.
Young looked at Mack and questioned whether "anyone ever (told) you what to do." Mack eagerly replied: "I took it upon myself when I first got elected to go to the state course on ethics." Apparently, it didn't take. Mack clearly received an "F" -- and it's only a matter of whether you believe it stood for Failed or Fool.
The city Ethics Review board, in a series of unanimous votes, clearly believed Mack knew he was wrong when he accepted a loan from a city supplicant and then voted on an item that directly affected the man, Courtesy car mogul Joe Scala.
The choices for Mack, who now faces a Municipal Court proceeding that could cost him his elected post, are all pejorative. He is either one of the dumbest people ever to hold public office. Or he is totally amoral and doesn't know the difference between ethical and unethical conduct. Or he is one of the most clueless businessmen ever. Or a combination thereof.
His "aw, shucks, I don't get what the big fuss is about" mien either brilliantly conceals a darker, more calculating side -- and this would be the best act since Jim Nabors played Gomer Pyle. Or, it is no performance and he is permanent resident of a place he has acknowledged visiting before -- La La land.
Whatever the explanation, and whatever happens in court, Mack's behavior has raised serious questions about whether he is fit for office, since his serial silly statements and his convenient memory lapses surely don't inspire confidence that he can make rational decisions.
The same could be said of the ethics panel, which arrived at the right conclusion despite a mostly mute and flummoxed membership and only because Chairman Earle White, as usual, guided the board with his blunt, no-nonsense analysis.
White essentially said that Mack's story, that he did not know a $57,000 loan from Scala was outstanding when he voted against a rival car dealer, was not credible. In fact, the hearing boiled down to whether the board would believe Mack and his inestimable attorney, Rick Wright, who argued a benign version of events that still constituted an ethics violation: That Mack, a newcomer to office and swept up in his first campaign for election, simply did not pay attention to his business affairs. Or, would the panel accept special counsel John Graves' assessment that Mack dissembled and maneuvered to squirm out of trouble only because the loan had been discovered or was about to be discovered?
Mack's explanation is not credible for a variety of reasons:
The point is simple, as Graves pointed out: Scala could have called the note due at any time, which gave him immense power over Mack.
Mack said during the hearing that Scala had proposed renaming his business from First Class Pawn to People's Pawn. But the latter seems better suited to be Mack's council motto: "Leave your offer for my business here and it can be redeemed for a vote later." You don't need an ethics course to tell you not to do business with people you regulate as an elected official.
Also, Mack was hardly a newcomer to politics. He was a planning commissioner, he had been in office nearly a year when this broke and he was hardly immersed in a tough election fight. What's more, his election was over for a couple of months before -- in his version of events -- he serendipitously discovered, coincident with the timing of ethics complaints being filed, that he had this loan with Scala that had not been paid.
Whether or not he's Gomer Pyle, Mack's real problem, even if he survives the legal process, is much more acute than he can possibly comprehend. His unique combination of deficiencies and his pattern of silly statements and weak excuses assure that even if he stays in office, he will be consigned to the worst fate of any elected official: No one can possibly take him seriously.
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