Grand Jury will consider charges against Moncrief

Sito Negron

Monday, Feb. 23, 2004 | 9:41 a.m.

A grand jury will meet Tuesday to consider charges against Las Vegas Councilwoman Janet Moncrief following allegations that she failed to report more than $100,000 in contributions during her successful campaign last spring against incumbent Michael McDonald.

She was served with notice Feb. 12 that the state intended to seek an indictment.

Moncrief did not return telephone calls seeking comment, and last week declined to address the issue. Her lawyer, Richard Wright, also would not comment on the case.

The councilwoman's troubles began in April, when Jim Ferrence, McDonald's campaign manager, filed a complaint regarding Moncrief's contributions. The complaint alleged that Moncrief and others in her campaign engaged in a "deliberate conspiracy of deception, illegal mailings, vast underreporting of expenditures and other unlawful acts."

Ferrence said Friday that he's "looking forward to seeing where the $100,000 that she spent and never reported came from."

"I think there were a number of people on her campaign who when swearing to things under oath won't be as inclined to lie as they have in the past," Ferrence said.

He declined to say where he thought her money came from.

Moncrief's campaign included several people who, after the election, came forward to say they worked behind the scenes on her behalf, including working on mailers attacking McDonald.

One of those, former council member Steve Miller, said that he has been requested to testify before the grand jury. He said he could not discuss his testimony, but he has consistently claimed that she spent money that she did not report.

He broke with Moncrief after her election. He said he had been promised a position as her ward liaison, but that she instead threw in her lot with political insiders friendly with Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Miller said while he made a mistake in trying to hide his relationship with Moncrief's campaign, "there were no laws against what I did, only against what Moncrief attested to (in her campaign reports) under penalty of perjury. The buck stops with her."

The allegations of failure to report expenses have involved the use of teenage campaign workers, mailers that attacked McDonald, and mailers that attacked unions and were made up to look as though they came from McDonald.

Ferrence said although it's too late to help his client, "there's some gratification in the public knowing Michael McDonald was ... wronged in the campaign, that mailers were sent out that appeared to come from him and he had absolutely nothing to do with them."

He said that eventually, whoever paid for Moncrief's campaign will be found out.