Columnist Jeff German: Wal-Mart sailed by as many slept

Saturday, June 12, 2004 | 12:10 p.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

JUne 12 - 13, 2004

There's plenty of blame to go around over the sudden emergence of plans for a Wal-Mart Supercenter at Russell Road and Eastern Avenue against the wishes of residents.

And though it would be convenient to accuse Wal-Mart of muscling this 200,000-square-foot project through the application process, the much-maligned mega-corporation seems to have clean hands. By all accounts, it went through normal channels.

That leaves us with a story of miscommunication, negligence and laziness within county government that, in the end, falls on the shoulders of the county commissioners, the public's last line of defense.

It is clear now that the commissioners didn't do their homework, which may have irreparably harmed the interests of the homeowners who might have to live near this monstrosity.

The commissioners failed to read 93 pages of backup material before the March 16 meeting in which they authorized Aviation Director Randy Walker to sign a lease to develop the 20-acre Wal-Mart site on the edge of McCarran International Airport.

As it turns out, the commissioners didn't even have to read all 93 pages. Had they turned to Page 5 they would have seen that the developer of the site, Marnell Corrao, had signed a sublease with Wal-Mart. Reading a little further, they would have found the entire sublease.

Had they done the reading the public pays them to do, the commissioners wouldn't have been surprised to learn June 2 during a design review of the supercenter that they had paved the way back in March for the massive development.

The commissioners didn't approve the design review June 2. They told Wal-Mart to come back in a couple of months after it meets with residents to hear compelling concerns about the size of the project. There is hope that the company will scale back its plans.

But how this project got as far as it did without meaningful input from residents is an example of a bureaucratic breakdown in its worst form. It is prompting county officials up and down the chain of command to impose new checks and balances.

The blame starts with Walker, who asked County Manager Thom Reilly to put the 20-acre lease on the March 16 consent agenda. Consent items generally are considered routine and are approved by the commissioners at the same time without debate. Each meeting usually has dozens of such items.

Walker said his staff was under the impression that Marnell Corrao executives had briefed commissioners about Wal-Mart's role in the development. That was the wrong impression. The commissioners weren't briefed. And now Walker concedes that he should have red-flagged the lease for Reilly.

The least Walker should have done, Reilly said, is put Wal-Mart's name in the summary of the consent item. The name is a magnet for controversy and surely would have gotten the attention of someone in Reilly's office.

Reilly, however, isn't ducking blame.

"Ultimately, we should have caught it," he said.

The "we" is the group of top managers who meet with Reilly before every County Commission meeting to decide which items to place on the consent agenda. The group includes Reilly's three assistant county managers, the county finance director and the county counsel -- all very smart people who know how to read.

All had access to the same 93 pages of backup material, but no one got to Page 5, either. Instead, they relied on Walker's flawed recommendation and put the item on the consent agenda.

After the commissioners approved the lease March 16, Wal-Mart quietly went through the rest of the development process, winning approval for the supercenter's design from the Paradise Town Board and the County Planning Commission. There was little opposition from residents.

Commissioners didn't learn of the political mess they had gotten themselves into until just days before the June 2 design review, when residents finally started making noise.

By then, of course, the damage had been done and the commissioners started playing the blame game.

If only Harry Truman was around to remind them that "the buck stops here."