Jon Ralston on why it doesn’t pay to trust the city government when it comes to the Bill Walters scandal

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006 | 12:33 p.m.

There is only one reason not to believe Las Vegas officials when they boast of their openness and insist they have nothing to hide. History.

This government is bereft of a sense of irony, as officials become more vocal about having transparency on Stewart Avenue as it becomes more obvious they are concealing something, whether it is incriminating evidence or raging incompetence.

The latest developments in the state probe of the city's dealings with developer Bill Walters include allegations that the city is about as open as Dick Cheney's office and insinuations that the investigators have uncovered more questionable transactions involving Walters. Those came in letters released by the city - as usual only after pressure - from the San Francisco-based firm hired by the state to conduct the probe that indicate City Hall has been unresponsive and uncooperative.

So I say to our Bay Area visitors: Welcome to our world, where if the city folks say it is white, start looking for black.

Unlike any entity I have watched in 20 years, this iteration of city government is the most closed, the most likely to dissemble. And it is enabled by a city attorney's office that functions as a black hole, a maw where requests for information and documents go in but they don't come out - unless wrenched out through public pressure.

It must just be a coincidence that all of the withheld documents the firm complained about in a Feb. 13 letter to Mayor Oscar Goodman were released ... on Feb. 13. Yes, this is a council of coincidences.

It must also have been a coincidence that a Metro report that alleged criminal activity and millions in taxpayer losses was completed before a November vote to give Walters a deal to lift a deed restriction - and yet not released until a day after Walters got what he wanted.

It must also have been a coincidence that the two people who spoke out about what they said was a rush to give Walters what he wanted - Deputy City Attorney John Redlein and city environmental officer Lori Wohletz - were demoted and left with no principled choice but to resign, respectively.

And it must be a coincidence that Goodman describes Walters as a friend and former client and then His Honor takes the point in pushing through the initial approval and now is the lead in criticizing the state probe.

These are the folks who ask us to trust them now?

When Goodman and a council chorus start whining about the firm's tactics - ones that seem well within the norm for such probes and include unannounced visits and requests for reams of documentation - one can't help but believe that is no coincidence.

Even if there is nothing to all of this, even if this is just a story of juice, the stumbling, bumbling and prevaricating city government is getting exactly what it so richly deserves for its secrecy-cloaked-in-openness game it has been playing for quite some time.

The latest gambit is for Selby to have claimed some kind of privilege to prevent certain documents from being released, an obviously untenable position the mayor and the council cannot sustain. Only this government would claim that documents relating to a public entity's actions involving a developer would not be public record or should not be released to a state investigator.

These folks, unlike the mayor and council, are not fooling around. After the first request for documents was made in November, after a Jan. 11 letter went unheeded, the firm penned another missive last week that finally jolted the city somnambulists into waking up.

The letter spoke of "considerable and unnecessary delay and a lack of cooperation" and meticulously laid out all the meetings and requests for information that have taken place - and been ignored or slowed down. It also refers to a Feb. 8 letter to the mayor "expressing our concerns," which was not included when the city finally responded to a request by the media last week and still has not been found as of this writing.

First place I'd check: The city attorney's office, where documents go to disappear.

Since council folks claim not to have seen these letters dating back weeks until now, it's clear the city either is mismanaging important correspondence and documents or purposely stanching the flow of information. Neither choice inspires confidence.

To his credit, Councilman Steve Wolfson candidly said Friday that he does not believe Metro did "a through enough investigation" and understands why the state probe is taking a long time since it is "a paper case." Wolfson, who led the move to rescind the Walters vote after the Metro report was released, said he would not have voted for the approval if he had known of the allegations.

Wolfson still manages to see a benign interpretation to all of this: "I don't think there's anything evil or wrong that's occurring here, I think its the natural process of government responding to things." I would think he's right except for one thing:

History.

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 at ralston@vegas.com.