Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005 | 7:30 a.m.
As those feebly covering up their motivations and misdeeds purport to hold a hearing today to get to the bottom of the scandal they created, Snow Job and the Five Dwarfs should be answering, not asking questions about Waltersgate.
This is mostly not about what happened in 1999, when Bill Walters was able to change the terms of a 50-year lease agreement granted a few years earlier and obtain the land from the Las Vegas City Council for $894,000 where he built the Royal Links golf course.
Although that history may provide some insight into the present, it is why the currently compliant council, Lois Tarkanian excepted, agreed so blithely two weeks ago to once again change the terms of Walters' arrangement, lifting a deed restriction for a tiny fraction of the land's appraised value and allowing him to turn a money-losing golf course into a residential development bonanza.
Mayor Oscar Goodman's stunt of sending "invitations" to former city officials to discuss what happened in 1999 is simply a charade to try to deflect attention from what happened in the run-up to last week's rubber-stamp, Tarkanian excepted, of what Walters wanted.
How did they come up with that list of invitees and leave off people such as ex-City Manager Larry Barton, who, according to a key city memo, caught then-Public Works boss Dick Goecke lying and providing favors for Walters, and yet did nothing?
That's one of many questions Goodman and the five council members who voted for the deal should be answering today rather than engaging in a mockery of an inquisition, a show trial designed to hide their own behavior.
Here are more questions Snow Job and the Five Dwarfs need to answer:
* When this item was first on the agenda July 6, there was nothing in the backup to explain the rationale for the transaction. Why?
* Why was Goodman so concerned about Deputy City Attorney John Redlein's "inflammatory" briefings to the council, which caused His Honor to abey the item, when everything Redlein told the council folks was well documented?
* Why was Tarkanian the only one who asked for an outside appraisal and, apparently, the only one who considered that $7.2 million was too little to open up land for development valued at as much as $60 million-plus? That is, why isn't the land's value important?
* Why is no one pointing out that the $894,000 value was arrived at six years ago by taking into account that only a golf course could be built there, thus rendering that irrelevant as a benchmark?
* If City Manager Doug Selby knew about the allegations against Goecke from Metro officials and then briefed the council on possible crimes outside the statute of limitations committed in the 1990s, why wasn't this raised at the rubber-stamping two weeks ago?
* Why do Goodman and at least Larry Brown say they knew of no allegations of criminal behavior when Selby, through a spokeswoman, says he briefed the council on the Metro allegations?
* Why shouldn't Brown and Gary Reese have to explain why they voted for Walters to get the land in 1999 and then change the terms of the agreement in 2005?
* If, as Goodman said, that he heard that the method of valuing the land to arrive at $7.2 million was discussed in 1999, why don't Brown and/or Reese explain if that was brought up then? And in the unlikely event it was, doesn't that mean they agreed to a ridiculous -- dare I say sweetheart? -- deal six years ago, with nothing in it for the city and everything in it for Walters?
* Why is it extortion -- Goodman's term for trying to get maximum price from Walters -- instead of doing your public duty to get as much money as possible for the taxpayers?
* Why is the only question, as Goodman says, whether there was anything criminal here as opposed to it reeking of sleaziness, a cover-up and bad policy?
Yes, today is a time for answers. But they should be coming from the people who will be asking the questions.
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