Columnist Jon Ralston: Land deal symbol of cronyism

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005 | 6:27 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

February 5 - 6, 2005

In the world of airport land trades, no good deed goes unrestricted.

But it is not the use of the land that appears to get restricted, only who gets to use it. And the question of whether the strictures touted by McCarran officials are more metaphoric than real, whether these sweet swaps are governed by unwritten rules seen by a chosen few goes to the heart of The Case of the Mysterious Deed Restriction That Wasn't.

Even though the media and political froth already have elevated this to the level of scandal, we have a long distance to traverse before this metamorphoses into Airportgate (1997), where Clark County commissioners slipped friends and political cronies onto a list of lucrative airport concessions, or the Good Old Boys, Inc., land deal (1990), where the Las Vegas mayor and city manager partnered with prominent businessmen on a parcel they helped appreciate in value.

These stories rarely are about whether actual crimes were committed; it is the perception, and often reality, that the system is closed, that the door to these offices, whether it belongs to an elected official or the head of the airport, has a sign that says: "Abandon all hope, ye who are not insiders."

In a place where this kind of incest is legal and juice is the coin of the realm, this, like other ethics imbroglios, becomes about whether the process was legitimate or whether corruption occurred. And corruption here has an expansive definition because in local government depravity often seems institutionalized and not criminalized, and most people have become inured to business as usual.

The superficial facts here are simple and tell a classic Vegas story: Man buys land from government for a song. Man sells land to developer for a fortune. Developer gets politicians to change zoning so he can make even more money.

But the reality here is that so far there is only smoke, fanned by the reactions of airport boss Randy Walker and broker Scott Gragson. And whether there is fire behind that smoke -- as in whether this is Good Old Boys Land Deals, the Sequel -- will depend on seeing whether there is a truth to be discerned behind the Fourth Estate frenzy.

The most benign truth is this: In mid-2003, an airport staffer, Sharon Jolley, then in charge of airport planning, overzealously stated in a legal ad that two parcels at Windmill and Durango were restricted to a cemetery use -- even though the actual deed restriction was more generally written. Savvy broker Gragson, scion of the family for whom the U.S. 95 leg through the city is named, makes his 20th airport land purchase (out of 46) on the last day of the year, paying $2.6 million. Gragson then quickly flips the land to well-known builder Jack Breslin just over a month later, making a 200 percent profit. So Gragson simply took advantage of a staff error and made a bundle.

The more suspicious truth is this: Breslin would not have been able to make any money on the purchase if the County Commission had not changed the land last month to make about half of it commercial. It was a rare residential parcel inside an airport-controlled zone, thus making any development there essentially restricted to ... a cemetery. In fact, the airport tried to block any change to the land at an Enterprise Town Board meeting last December because it was a nonconforming use. A week later the commissioners approved amendments to the land use plan that allowed the zone change Breslin needed to build something for live people, which is much more profitable than catering to corpses.

So these same county commissioners who are shocked, shocked to learn of this outrage were the same ones who have allowed the developer to justify his purchase price because they changed what he could do with the land.

A lack of openness and a slew of imbued perceptions have fueled this story in its early stages.

Walker is considered one of the valley's best administrators, so good he was called in to be the Red Adair on the troubled Regional Justice Center. But he has a brusque, smug style that is hardly suited to damage control. Gragson has been defensive and dismissive, and it has not helped him that his quoted accounts have conflicted with Walker about when he knew or if he knew about the cemetery restriction.

The perception, too, that this is somehow a resurgence of the Mormon Mafia, as if all these folks have some secret LDS handshake also is reverberating in the community. It doesn't hold up too well, at least not yet -- Walker may be LDS but Gragson is not, and Commission Chairman Rory Reid, who is Mormon, has all but invited the cops into the story.

We also are witnessing the blood in the water syndrome, where stories beget stories (even ludicrously stretched and overplayed ones) and the sharks can't wait to tear up enemies. Hell hath no fury like airport supplicants or commissioners scorned, so plenty of developers, lobbyists and a commissioner or two with axes to grind with McCarran are stirring the pot.

The county probe could reveal much -- county Auditor Jerry Carroll is an honest pro. And changing the process to land auctions also will help -- the only folks who benefit from swaps or sales are those who know how to game a system where the rules are fuzzy and governments are too lazy, too harried or too venal.

So much damage has been done, though, because of the torrent of publicity that the real question is not so much whether any good airport deed goes unrestricted but whether the public will ever believe that any bad deed goes punished.