Columnist Jon Ralston: Lack of ethics lamentable

Friday, Dec. 17, 2004 | 4:40 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

December 18 - 19, 2004

Recently state Sen. John Lee declared, without a hint of irony and with much solemnity, that the last rites should be administered to ethics in Nevada.

This is not quite "The Murder on the Silver State Express," where Hercule Poirot would have found that everybody did it. But this is the year that the "everybody does it" crowd has won, reaffirming that Nevada's guiding political principle is moral relativism.

This is true at all levels of government, from Las Vegas to Carson City. The local cesspool features a Las Vegas City Council where nearly half the members have been deemed ethically challenged and where a corruption scandal lingers at the Clark County Government Center. State government conducted the first impeachment trial in Nevada history in which the lawmakers did not have the courage of their conviction of Kathy Augustine as they whined all the way to the censure vote.

The end of the year is near but the end already has come for any sense (or any desire?) in the public that transgressions will be punished. From Mayor Oscar Goodman's brazen flouting of common sense ethics to Augustine's abuse of her employees to further her political career, the bar continues to be lowered.

Unethical behavior begins at home and then moves northward. As Las Vegas moves forward to celebrate the centennial, it is back to the past at City Hall, where mob mores (the family is paramount) have returned and the code of Omerta extends to cowering staffers.

Goodman's charisma and shtick are so effective that his use of his office to help his family -- his wife's school and his son's pocketbooks have been enhanced by his elected position -- goes virtually unpunished.

Goodman embodies the moral relativism that infects the body politic and his sense of entitlement to be morally relative about his relatives is palpable. The mayor's leadership on the unethical front allows impressionable observers of this fine role model to believe that the admonition in state law that elected officials avoid conflicts is meaningless.

Councilman Michael Mack was forced into retirement by his following of the mayor's ethical lead, soliciting city supplicants and seeing nothing wrong so long as he disclosed ex post facto. The Goodman-Mack behavior makes Councilwoman Janet Moncrief almost a pitiable figure, indicted for campaign contribution reporting irregularities. But unlike Mack and Goodman's family, Moncrief has not profited from her position in government.

Goodman, who benefits from having the state's largest newspaper as a de facto public relations organ (with a couple of notable exceptions), sets the tone for public behavior in Las Vegas. He can say whatever he wants and do whatever he wants. And so long as he is having fun and making headlines, no one seems to care.

Have a Bombay Sapphire martini, help your cronies and viciously punish all those who cross you. Back to the past. An offer Las Vegas refuses to refuse.

Across town, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey's departure surely heartens those at the county government center who now believe the final target of Operation G-Sting has been expunged. Erin Kenny, Lance Malone, Dario Herrera and now Kincaid-Chauncey are gone. So all unethical conduct similarly has departed. Although some of the fresh blood makes me sanguine, few in the public will believe, especially as the feds move with the alacrity of a desert tortoise on the cases, that business has changed on Grand Central Parkway.

If ethics have taken a holiday in Southern Nevada, up Carson City way the vacation has been ongoing. Part-time legislators, who come from all walks (and sometimes crawls) of life, are inherently conflicted. DoubleDippinggate, which claimed the political life of Wendell Williams but left others in their legislative seats, was only one facet of the problem. Legislators who sit on bank and gaming boards and who advocate for their own or their friends' business interests are too often the rule and not the exception.

And so to see some of these folks sitting in judgment of Augustine, who may be an execrable figure, was a little much to take. The senators bravely picked apart shaky state employees so they could arrive at the conclusion they wanted -- a mild chastisement -- so their own glass houses would not shatter. The performance of the Assembly folks was not much better, morally and relatively speaking, as they did no homework, asked almost no questions and passed the buck to the upper house.

Get in, get out and leave the consequences for another day. Standard operating procedure in the Legislature.

Is there reason to believe real reform will come in 2005? You have seen various ethics proposals floating as a reaction to the Augustine mess and as a preparation for gubernatorial candidacies. But the first order of business for lawmakers is genuflecting to angry cranks, especially the pull-up-the-drawbridge blue- and gray-hairs, who have seen their property appreciate but wail about their tax bills. Ethics can wait; pandering remains paramount.

Which brings me to my final, tangentially related year-end lament: There are few big-picture thinkers in Nevada politics. A few legislators and County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury maybe. And, ironically enough, Goodman, whose ethics myopia is contrasted with a far-sighted view of Las Vegas as a major league city in all ways, so long, of course, as he is painted in the foreground.

But when searching for ethics or visionaries in government here, you take what you can find for a very good reason: Everything is relative.