Sunday, June 18, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.
The brouhaha that the Los Angeles Times ignited in our judiciary is another piece of evidence in the long chain that shows Las Vegas and Southern Nevada are not quite there yet.
I guess I am not surprised, but I am a little disappointed. On the heels of the G-Sting case, the idea that business as usual among public officials and the constituencies they serve continues unabated is galling.
And then Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron has the audacity to arbitrarily grant a three-day reprieve from arrest for the beleaguered Fran Deane, who was not even in the courtroom! Sheriff Bill Young was not the only person who was outraged by this capricious decision. If the law applies to one, it should apply to all.
Don't these people read the papers? Or are they so smug that they don't care?
Maybe they know more than the rest of us. The default in Nevada politics since statehood has been centralized power that runs the state for its own benefit. An ordinary citizen could not catch a break. First it was the Comstock, where the U.S. senators were part of the crew that dominated mining. After the demise of mining, the railroad ran the state. After that, a hard-scrabble saloon keeper turned magnate named George Wingfield owned the state for the better part of 30 years. Since then, it has been gaming and most recently real estate developers have challenged for a seat at the table.
With such a tawdry history, I suppose that it would be too much to expect judges to decline money from the attorneys who bring cases before them or to handle a nearly defrocked public official the way they do the rest of us.
But the pattern is old and established. Grease turns the wheels, in this case of justice.
The issue has little to do with whether judges are elected or appointed. We know that elections, at least for the judiciary, have real flaws; a case can be made that appointment would yield its own level of cronyism. Our problems run much deeper.
We have to address the parochial nature of local politics. Even though greater Las Vegas has become a community of nearly 2 million people, in too many areas our institutions have not grown up with the city. Obviously, some elected officials behave as though public office is a license to loot.
The judiciary is captive to the very industry it regulates, and it takes an out-of-town newspaper to alert us. Folks, that does not meet my definition of grown-up politics.
The problem is growing. We continue to allow a cozy and even incestuous relationship between elected power and the business community. While former Municipal Judge Dayvid Figler believes that little will change because Nevada law allows judges so much discretion, it is time that such power is curtailed.
The test should be simple for everyone in public office: If it looks like a duck and smells like a duck, it is a duck. Even the appearance of conflict of interest or impropriety should be a red flag for anyone who faces election or seeks appointment.
If it looks bad on the 5 p.m. news and you do it, you should be unfit for office not only in Las Vegas, but also in Nevada as a whole. If we are to build a state worthy of the name - and neither The New York Times nor the Los Angeles Times would give us our due at this time - it requires much tighter regulation of the relationship between not only the judiciary, but also all public officials and the communities they ostensibly serve.
The reasons for this change are as much about preserving the quality of life in Nevada as they are about any abstract sense of morality. As more companies come to do business here and new residents abound, they have a reasonable expectation of being treated fairly.
Exposes such as the one in the Los Angeles Times hurt us in more than visible ways. They suggest that Nevada remains the "great rotten borough" of legend, a place where you might not want to invest your money.
Even in the middle of a $20 billion construction boom, we have to look to the future. Tamping down on the good ole boy idiosyncrasies of our ribald past is as good a place as any to start.
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