Friday, Sept. 30, 2005 | 9:52 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Where's Wendell?
The Nevada Ethics Commission will have an incomplete case against Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald unless it can catch up to former assemblyman Wendell Williams.
His allegations spurred the investigation into whether Boggs McDonald misused her previous government position to try to protect the job of her husband. But so far, the ethics commission staff has been unable to find or talk to Williams.
And that's not unusual. There were complaints in 2004 that Williams, while still a member of the Assembly, couldn't be reached by phone. Even the staff of the Legislative Counsel Bureau was unable to contact him during that period. Williams listed his telephone number in the 2003 legislative guide but apparently no one ever answered it then and and no one answers it now.
Williams, who was embroiled in controversy when he lost to a primary election challenger in 2004, is important to the ethics commission case because in a television interview in Las Vegas in 2004 he said Boggs McDonald, who at that time was a Las Vegas City Councilwoman, put pressure on him to kill a bill that reorganized the office of state Treasurer Brian Krolicki. Her husband, Steven McDonald, worked in that office. Williams at that time worked in the city's Neighborhood Services Department. He said in the television interview that Boggs McDonald was, in effect, his boss at the city, so he felt pressured to do what she wanted.
Williams, in his interview with Channel 8, talked about records that would back up what he said. During the investigation into Boggs McDonald's conduct, Stacy Jennings, executive director of the ethics commission, said she made repeated attempts to reach Williams by telephone because she wanted to get more details from him about his allegations regarding Boggs McDonald's conduct.
But nobody answered at the telephone number listed in the 2003 legislative guide for Williams, Jennings said.
Jennings said she then sent a letter to Williams asking him to produce an e-mail that could be used in evidence and also asking to interview him. Williams never replied but Jennings received a call from Larry Semenza II who said he was Williams' lawyer.
Semenza, according to Jennings, promised to provide the e-mail in question and to permit an interview with Williams. She said Semenza kept saying he would produce the documents and the interview. But Jennings never got the documents and never got the interview, despite making repeated telephone calls to Semenza and Williams from March to July 15. Most of the time she got no answer. When she did talk to Semenza, he told her that the documentation would be sent and the interview would be set up, but neither was, Jennings said.
Throughout the months long investigation, she was never able to talk to Williams, she said. But, she said, she does expect to interview him before the Dec. 14 meeting of the ethics commission in Las Vegas. And, she noted, the commission has the power to subpoena Williams to appear at the hearing.
To compel Williams to show up at the hearing, however he would have to be found to be served with the subpoena.
Attempts by the Sun to reach Williams or Semenza were unsuccessful Wednesday and Thursday.
Jennings said the commission staff did obtain a copy of e-mail correspondence dated April 11, 2003, between Boggs McDonald and her Executive Assistant Audrie Dodge requesting Dodge contact Williams, Arberry and Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, who was chairwoman of the Government Affairs Committee that considered the reorganization bill. The date of the e-mail appears to line up with the timeline of SB446, the bill to reorganize the treasurer's office. The bill was passed out of the Senate Government Affairs Committee on April 9, 2003.
Jennings said the glimpse of the e-mail shown during the television interview with Williams, however, is not the same e-mail that the staff obtained from the city of Las Vegas.
Boggs McDonald informed the ethics commission that she never asked either Williams or Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas to intervene to stop the bill that threatened the job of her husband. Boggs McDonald said she was not Williams' superior and had no authority over him. Arberry had worked for the city but had resigned before the 2003 Legislature.
The bill passed the Legislature allowing the reorganization of the treasurer's office. Steven McDonald was fired as administrator of the unclaimed property division in the treasurer's office in October 2003, several months after passage of the bill. State Treasurer Brian Krolicki said Thursday McDonald was not terminated because of the reorganization. He declined to discuss the reason for the firing, saying it was a personnel matter. 4
archive
