Friday, April 9, 2004 | 7:20 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
April 10 - 11, 2004
The 119-page transcript of the two-member Ethics Commission panel meeting April 2 illuminates the thinking of Commissioners George Keele and Bill Flangas as they agreed to move forward on complaints of unethical behavior by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. The transcript also includes analysis of her investigation by Executive Director Stacy Jennings.
Below are excerpts from the discussion of the most serious charges involving the iPolitix matter:
Keele: And that's what we need in every public official in the State of Nevada, is somebody who not only can -- to use the Clinton administration's word, parse the law or break it into little distinct concepts and words and phrases and thereby eviscerate the law, but rather somebody who appreciates the spirit of the Ethics and Government Law sufficiently to allow himself, because of his love for his family, to make a hard decision in terms of career advancement and to say, "Son, no, not this time. We're going to stay so far from that bright line that no one will even ever be able to question the result."
Flangas: In his response to the Request for Opinion, the ethics complaint, the Mayor skillfully and eloquently dodged the real issues. The excuses and protestations are outstanding, the performance is lacking. A reckless disregard and cavalier attitude towards the public trust is self-evident. There is nothing complicated about ethics. Ethics is a matter of personal conscience with a duty and obligation to exercise moral self-discipline in the spirit of a public service as a public trust. Mayor Goodman violated both the spirit and the intent of the law.
Jennings: Public employees need to maintain a separation of their personal and private relationships that may in any way provide an unwarranted privilege or advantage that would otherwise not have presented itself had the person not been a public employee. And I believe that that is the crux of the matter.
The opportunity for Ross Goodman and his company, iPolitix, to host a cocktail party with potential clients for his new CD product would not have existed if Oscar Goodman did not hold the office of Mayor. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.
As such, involving himself in the cocktail party, inviting people to attend, and participating in related activities in support of his son's business endeavor not only gave his son, Ross, an advantage he might not otherwise have had, but also failed to maintain an appropriate separation between Mayor Goodman's personal relationships and his public duties.
Thus, his conduct did bestow an unwarranted privilege or advantage to (his) son, Ross Goodman, and further to Ross Goodman's company, iPolitix, that otherwise would not have presented itself had Mayor Goodman not been a public officer.
I also point out what in Mayor Goodman's response that he said: "Most of the Commission's prior opinions considering NRS 281.481(2) have focused upon the second part of the statute -- the issue of whether a particular advantage or benefit was unwarranted.
"Without waiving any arguments, I would submit that the just and sufficient cause stage of the Commission's work requires little effort upon the issue of what might be unwarranted. The Washington, D.C. event I hosted certainly had a social component, it certainly was conducive to cultivation of a collegial and convivial relationship with fellow mayors, all of which serves an useful purpose for my constituents in Las Vegas.
"The issue of whether any business opportunity for iPolitix was offset by the advantage of having the Mayor of Las Vegas and three of his staffers able to cultivate personal relations with foreign mayors (thereby making the iPolitix advantage warranted) does not yet require examination by the Commission.
"Without a predicate finding that my government power was used, as has been delineated by a wealth of prior Commission opinions - the issue of whether there may have been any advantage bestowed is of no consequence."
That statement in and of itself is rather scary to me. I believe that that goes directly to the crux of the ethics and government laws.
I believe if you look at the comments of the Mayor, his own words in the news conferences and in the information that he provided to this office, that to contend that, first of all, that giving his son's company an advantage was warranted, and second of all, that if there was an advantage, it's not of consequence to this Commission, directly goes against everything that the Legislature has charged this Commission with doing.
Keele: (The law) says a public officer or employee shall not use his position, and I'm going again to be leaving out a few words, his position in government to secure or grant unwarranted privileges for himself or any person to whom he has a commitment in a private capacity to the interests of that person. Mayor Goodman's son Ross falls into that category. He is a person to whom Mayor Goodman has a commitment in a private capacity to the interest of that person.
But albeit that his own apology, and I use that term in a classic sense, is very clever and very complete, to me it is unpersuasive, and the reason that it's unpersuasive is that if Mayor Goodman has sworn an oath indicating that he is familiar with the Nevada Ethics and Government Law, then he also knows the standard of NRS 281.501 Subsection 2, and he knows that he ought not ... allow himself to use his position, including his title of Mayor, to where the resulting benefit accruing to other persons whose interest, to which the member is committed in a private capacity, is not greater than that accruing to any other member of the general occupation or group.
"If he loves his son, that's great, but ... he (should) understand the Ethics Law, and I think he does, well enough to know that a visceral force should compel him to say 'I love you enough to say no, Ross. I can't do that.' "
-- State Ethics Commissioner George Keele, April, 2, 2004, on Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's defense that he can help his son's business because he loves him.
Where has The Happy Mayor gone?
Within a span of less than a week, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has given a pair of Jekyll and Hyde performances that surely have left many of his constituents stupefied. At news conferences at City Hall, His Honor has transformed in front of cameras from ebullient showman to imperious monarch.
Facing a state ethics panel inquiry into a pattern of behavior that indicates he has used his position, and used city resources, to help his family, Goodman has insisted he would do it again, lashed out at unseen forces and unleashed vague threats. ("People better not sleep.")
As the media aggressively have pursued the story, which primarily focuses on Goodman exploiting a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting to host a party for his son's business, iPolitix, and slipping Ross Goodman city property to use on a promotional CD, more information has come to light that surely has affected the way the public views him. Keele's words above perfectly distilled the issue that is obvious to everyone but Goodman -- you can't use your elected job to help your family's private interests.
It also turns out that Goodman has been amassing a substantial vanity closet of videotapes, paid for by taxpayers, that have nothing to do with city business and include news clips of his mother, the mayor throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game and the mayor talking about losing a Super Bowl bet.
As he continues to behave erratically, Goodman confronts what he fears most -- that a public that has viewed him as a lovable maverick who appears to speak the truth will come to see him instead as just another arrogant, phony politician serving himself at their expense.
What once may have seemed funny to some -- Goodman joking about his mob past, threatening to "whack" people he didn't like -- has now surely grown tiresome to many. Can he weather the gathering storm or is he, as one wag put it, like one of those larger-than-life Macy's Day parade floats, slowly deflating from all the self-inflicted pinpricks?
There are greater issues, too. First, Goodman's undermining of the council-manager form of government. The way he began his April 2 news conference was a symbol of a more systemic problem, as he disgorged this bizarre non-sequitur: "I want to make it very, very clear that as mayor of the city of Las Vegas, I am going to run the city the way I want to run the city."
The brazenness of that statement pales in comparison to the way that employees of the city act as if they are mayoral subjects, including allegations in the Ethics Commission report that City Attorney Brad Jerbic interfered in the probe of Goodman. There also exists an ex post facto memo on videotape policy written by City Manager Doug Selby for no other reason than to try to cover for Goodman amassing a taxpayer-funded ego-gratification collection -- and it didn't do a very good job of mayoral posterior-protecting, either.
Sources inside City Hall report that many other employees, some of them dedicated staffers, are feeling immense pressure as the scrutiny gets more intense. The issue has metastasized from one elected official using his office to help his family to how a government supposedly run by the city manager and for the taxpayers can be subjugated to the will of a forceful and perhaps frightening mayor.
The other, larger issue at stake here is the integrity of the ethics process itself. It's not unusual for lawyers for embattled targets of ethics probes to attack the process and argue their clients are not being treated fairly -- some lawyers, including Rick Wright and Kathy England, have raised legitimate points about due process. In this case, Goodman has raised whether ethics panel director Stacy Jennings had the authority to expand her probe beyond the iPolitix matter -- a substantive topic of debate for the commission to consider.
But Goodman has gone way beyond legal niceties to ugly accusations about Jennings and her integrity, accusing her of being manipulated by the media and breaching confidentiality rules. Privately, the mayor has thundered about launching personal attacks on Jennings and others. But if the commissioners allow Goodman to seek information about Jennings or any of them, they will be opening a door that they can never close.
How far Goodman is willing to go to distract from the issues at hand -- eight potential ethics violations that allege a serial abuse of his office that could result in him returning to private life -- will depend on the steeliness of the ethics panel and the toughness of a media that, like the public, has enjoyed his act until now.
The signs have been there for years for those who cared to look -- including revelations three years ago that he privately praised Councilman Michael McDonald's courage while publicly flogging him; the mayor's claim of making a contribution to charity that turned out to be from customers at an establishment where Goodman made an appearance; his regular contradictions of positions even within the same news conference.
Goodman's initial reaction to the recommendation by the two-member panel of the Ethics Commission went beyond any "'methinks he doth protest too much" conclusion. Not only was it incoherent and venomous, not to mention threatening, it included at least four dissimulations or flat-out untruths. To wit:
Later he said of Jennings: "She's telling me I can't have Coffees with the Mayor and Martinis with the Mayor."
This is not just a misdirection; it's simply false.
First, none of the eight allegations involved the coffees or martinis.
Second, according to Jennings' report, it was Goodman himself who raised the issues, which "had not been previously under consideration by the Executive Director." Jennings, though, said she concluded the chance of any real conflicts with businesses having these events and their regulation by the city is minimal. "Therefore, the Executive Director provides this as additional information for the panel and does not make a recommendation in regard to any potential violation of ethics law."
This, again, is simply untrue. The report cites news reports, as any thorough probe would. But Jennings also interviewed Goodman and quotes not just from that interview but from videotapes of his own news conferences. She also interviewed at least two council members.
Again, he made this up. The transcript of the ethics panel proceeding clearly shows that Keele would not vote to move forward on the three issues because of procedural allegations made by Goodman that Jennings did not have the authority to expand the investigation. He did not say there might not be validity to some of them.
All he expressed was concern that he didn't want Goodman to have legal recourse to undo a commission finding later by a legal technicality, that perhaps the full commission should initiate separate complaints on the other issues. "In the proper context and with the proper proof, the Jane magazine matter, the Bombay Gin matter and the use of the Cadillac matter are all appropriate topics to delve into," Keele said.
Forget the ludicrous notion that Goodman didn't readily assent to giving the money to his wife's school. Ruvo says it was his idea. The mayor could have insisted it should not go to The Meadows for the same reason Keele pointed out he should have told his son "no" on the iPolitix party, as the ethics commissioner imagined the colloquy between father and son:
Ross Goodman: "Why not?"
Oscar Goodman: "Because it would create an appearance of impropriety and I don't want to drag you into that."
But none of the $100,000, more than two years later, has gone to the homeless, indicating what the mayor cared most about was becoming a liquor salesman and not a social activist.
Goodman followed that April 2 performance with an even more bizarre act almost a week later. Only moments after opening his weekly news conference, he stormed out and refused to answer questions about the ethics probe. His angry mayor routine was shown on most television newscasts and is scheduled be rebroadcast several times this week on KCLV-TV, Channel 2, the city's television station.
Most of these issues are pretty simple to voters who Goodman believes will perpetually shower him with unquestioning adulation. You should not use your office to help your son. If you say you are taking a gin contract to help the city's homeless programs, you should not turn around and give half the money to a tony private school run by your wife. You should not drive around in a Cadillac donated by a business you regulate. And you should not crassly endorse a magazine Web site and promise to name a street after a contest winner just so you can get your picture in the publication.
Anyone with a modicum of common sense sees this. People in this valley have viscerally concluded that a county commissioner should not solicit business opportunities from those she regulates and that commissioners should not put cronies on a list for lucrative airport contracts and that councilmen should not become financially entangled with people who come before them. I think they already have figured out that a mayor shouldn't use his office to put money in his son's pocket.
In the weeks leading up to what surely will be a spectacular May 12 hearing before the full Ethics Commission, Goodman's behavior will be even more heavily scrutinized. He has insisted that he will defend himself because "I haven't done anything wrong" and "I am the best lawyer I know." Surely, friends will try to talk him out of having a fool for a client. Will he change his mind?
We also will soon see whether Goodman will continue to try to distract from his own problems by attacking others and by trying to use the legal process to intimidate his critics. We also will see whether any city employees will surface to challenge Goodman's hegemony or if they will cower in the corner and hope to avoid the maelstrom.
There are still many unresolved questions about the iPolitix business, including details of Councilman Michael Mack's involvement, whether Mack and Ross Goodman are involved with other clients (they both represent the Strip club Treasures), who really came up with the guest list for that D.C. party and whether any city resources were involved in doing so.
At some point, the mayor may realize that his son is about to be put in the stocks, too, as Ross Goodman should be subpoenaed to appear before the panel. And when Goodman the Elder screams bloody murder about the outrageousness of his son being hauled before the ethics tribunal, perhaps he will not sleep well knowing that the reason Goodman the Younger is in this position is because the mayor didn't love him enough to say no.
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