Columnist Jon Ralston: ‘Servants’ brazen in their greed

Friday, April 4, 2003 | 6:01 a.m.

"My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time --

To let the punishment fit the crime --

The punishment fit the crime"

-- W.S. Gilbert, 1885

IF ONLY Gilbert and Sullivan's marvelous Mikado were around Southern Nevada these days, as transgressors seem immune from even a wrist-slap, much less the Dante-esque dispatch the comic opera geniuses had in mind.

Payback, to use the modern vernacular, not only isn't hell, the payoff is heavenly for those who flout the laws that govern everyone else and make a mockery of a term that already is thought of as an oxymoron by too many: public service.

Common sense and basic integrity have taken a back seat to unbridled avarice. Greed is not just good here in a town built on it; it is great, especially, more than ever, if you are a public official.

And no one seems to care -- not the media, not the honest men and women who don't trade on their elected positions but won't criticize their brethren (at least not publicly), not law enforcement, which remains prostrate or uninterested in what anyone can see is outrageous.

Outrage isn't just dead in Southern Nevada; it's as if it doesn't exist. The ethical ethos is that anything goes -- and it is.

Take the cases of two local elected officials, who are brazenly being paid by people they regulate, using the sophistry that if they abstain and disclose, they are acting legally. That logic, of course, presupposes that their public votes are the only ways they can help their clients, who are coughing up large paychecks while the public is sending them another one for their, ahem, services.

I speak of Las Vegas Councilman Michael Mack and Clark County Commissioner Mark James. Both have recently been revealed to have been taking money from those it is their duty to oversee -- Mack has been openly and, using his word, aggressively seeking the contracts while James has refused to relinquish an existing one that has become a manifest conflict.

Mack has insisted on soliciting city supplicants, including the owners of new strip club, since he became a consultant to an ad firm that already had city clients. Now why would he be doing this? Because he can.

Mack, a failed pawnbroker, now an advertising man without portfolio? That brings to mind more of Gilbert's brilliant satiric poetry:

"The advertising quack who wearies

With tales of countless cures,

His teeth, I've enacted,

Shall all be extracted

By terrified amateurs."

No doubt Mack has informed potential clients that he can cure any of their, ahem, advertising problems because of his, ahem, skills. But having his teeth pulled -- surely his wisdom teeth never existed -- seems too kind for someone who cannot understand why putting the arm on people who come before the council is a conflict between your public duty and your private commitments.

Mack continues to go after business, continues to insist he doesn't have to disclose who he is soliciting, continues to read a bizarre and often lengthy list of pseudo-disclosures at the beginning of every meeting. But why didn't someone tell him to stop?

Then there is James, the former state senator who appeared last week in his former elected venue, Carson City, to lobby not on behalf of the county but his client, Republic Services. You may have heard of the company -- it has been able to win those multi-year, monopolistic contracts with local governments because of some combination of its impeccable service to residents and its even better service to politicians as one of the state's largest campaign contributors. (Anyone ever wonder exactly why the garbage company would have to invest so much in local and legislative campaigns. What would be the reason? And then you see those super-long contracts and ...)

Republic is regulated by the county -- theoretically. Yet James sees nothing wrong with getting paid as a lobbyist by the company to try to further its interests in Carson City, which, at some point, could actually conflict with the taxpayer interests. You know, the taxpayers who pay his salary.

It's no problem, James says, so long as he abstains on Republic items on the agenda. But what if Republic is seeking a benefit from the state that may affect its ability to provide that impeccable service to county residents? Who does James serve then? One guess who pays him more money -- you or Republic?

The Mikado also had a punishment in mind for the likes of the prolix commissioner:

"All prosy dull society sinners,

Who chatter and bleat and bore,

Are sent to hear sermons

From mystical Germans

Who preach from ten till four."

Nothing so comic seems fit for James. But maybe he should have to choose between the trashy largess and the public dole?

Granted, so long as we have part-time elected officials, conflicts will arise. But public service, as it was once envisioned, was supposed to involve sacrifice, perhaps giving up a profitable private life to serve the people.

James and Mack fail to grasp that you can't do both, or use one to enhance the other. Or can they?

It would indeed be sublime if some, any punishment could be found for these politicians. But instead of paying a price, they just keep making more money.