Editorial: Commissioner doesn’t get it

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

It's troubling to see Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald continue to tiptoe up to the line of ethical behavior and then jump over it.

Once again Boggs McDonald has been found to have failed to disclose her growing list of ethical entanglements.

In Saturday's Sun, Tony Cook reported that Boggs McDonald failed to reveal her relationship with members of the board of Keep Memory Alive, the foundation behind the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute, when she was president of the organization.

Cook found six instances in which members of the board came before the commission, on business unrelated to the charitable organization, and each time Boggs McDonald failed to say a thing about it.

It's unfortunate Keep Memory Alive, which is doing wonderful work, is dragged into this when it did nothing wrong. It has become a victim of Boggs McDonald's continued failure to understand or acknowledge the principles of disclosure and open government.

Boggs McDonald explained the incidents as oversights or beyond the reasonable disclosure requirements.

"I don't think you have to disclose wives and first cousins of people," Boggs McDonald said. "Where do you draw the line?"

It's an interesting question coming from the commissioner who took a $100,000 loan from a developer four months after helping the same developer obtain a zoning change in Clark County.

The answer, in her case, is disturbing: It's wherever she wants to draw the line.