Columnist Jon Ralston: On lingering questions over the Walters land deal — and a suspect demotion

Friday, Dec. 9, 2005 | 8:07 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the daily e-mail newsletter RalstonFlash.com. His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

In case anyone is worried, there's no Big Brother at Las Vegas City Hall. Just ask the Biggest Brother of them all.

When Mayor Oscar Goodman was asked Thursday whether he had any involvement in the demotion of ex-Assistant City Attorney (now Deputy City Attorney) John Redlein, he first responded by repeating the question at his news conference: "Did I have any involvement? I would not be making that kind of decision. Absolutely not. ... We don't get involved in personnel issues ... that's up to the manager's office ..."

When he was pressed about whether demoting Redlein, whose disclosure of questionable dealings with developer Bill Walters has resulted in Metro Police, state and federal probes of the city's maneuvers, sent the wrong message about people speaking out (i.e., whistleblowers), His Honor retorted: "No, because there's no message. This had nothing to do with speaking out."

And then this telling line: "This had nothing to do with speaking out. This had something to do with the way a presentation was made and the context in which it was made, not the content of it."

Paging George Orwell.

First, how does Goodman have so much knowledge of why Redlein was demoted if it's the manager's job and he was not involved? I wonder.

But, more importantly, what happened here -- confirmed by multiple sources -- is that what got Redlein in trouble with some of the council folks was that he only told some of them about what are now seen as possible crimes committed by the city to give Walters the Royal Links Golf Course land in the late 1990s.

The question is why the others were not told -- Redlein told those he was charged with telling -- and why they are upset more about not having the information than they are about possible crimes and a deal they rubber-stamped to lift a deed restriction for one-eighth the value of the land.

Paging Franz Kafka.

It's also been confirmed that Councilman Steve Wolfson, who was given the information by Redlein, was furious about not hearing it beforehand and told Goodman so. It was soon afterward that Goodman put off a vote and later brought in Metro.

That has in turn led to the attorney general's involvement, especially because crimes that may or may not have been committed may or may not have been committed outside the statute of limitations. And the FBI is sniffing around this case after the city's chief environmental officer blew the whistle on the potential costs ($70 million?) of allowing Walters to build homes on the course adjacent to a wastewater treatment plant.

What remains inexplicable is why, when the vote first came up in July, there was no agenda backup -- the council folks were expected simply to vote on the done deal. Why would this happen?

Why would those tough city negotiators simply accept Walters' $7.2 million offer and not try to get a better deal for taxpayers, if indeed they could surmount the policy of allowing homes near a treatment plant?

And what is truly both Kafkaesque and Orwellian is that if not for Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian protesting that no land appraisal by the city or engineering report by the city had been commissioned, the true horrors of the deal never would have been exposed.

Even if this turns out to be a cover-up without a crime -- and this is the best case -- the city folks have yet to acknowledge they made any mistakes or that their behavior is ethically questionable. Instead, Redlein gets demoted, Goodman and others continue to defend the deal and a chill pervades City Hall.

Or does it?

"Nobody in City Hall would ever tell anybody not to speak their piece," Goodman insisted. "Nobody would ever censor anybody here. If somebody has an issue they want to bring to the public's attention, if they want to call you fellas (the media) up, if they want to call me up, there will be no impediment. I don't believe in that."

Paging Henny Youngman.