He saw to county’s rise

By Tony Cook

Friday, Aug. 31, 2007 | 10 p.m.

Bruce Woodbury's daily routine hasn't changed much over the past quarter century.

The Clark County commissioner still lives in the Boulder City home he built in the late 1970s. He drives to work in his 15-year-old Lexus, which is pushing 280,000 miles. And he never has adjusted to the age of computers, still writing everything by hand.

In literary terms, he is the classic static character, the same at the beginning of the novel as at the end. And that's perhaps the primary reason the 62-year-old lawyer has lasted so long on one of the most powerful, and historically corrupt, elected bodies in the state.

Woodbury will become the longest-serving county commissioner in the state's history on Tuesday. He became a commissioner in 1981, before many of his constituents -- those 25 and younger -- were even born.

He was born in Las Vegas in 1944, when fewer than 50,000 people lived in Clark County, compared with 1.9 million today.

He attended Las Vegas High School, then one of only three or four in the valley. His graduating class in 1962 was like a who's who of Nevada movers and shakers: Sig Rogich, a key aide to most Nevada governors and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; Mike Sloan, a prominent Democratic operative and gaming consultant; former Clark County Manager Dale Askew; Gardner Jolley and William Urga, Woodbury's longtime law partners; and Marc Ratner, former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Woodbury and others formed a social club called The Bachelors. The group mainly attended parties and sported satin blue jackets with a logo designed by Rogich, who would go on to make his name in marketing. Call it Nevada's Skull & Bones.

The way Woodbury would govern was evident in those early days. Shy and reserved, Woodbury hated public speaking and learned the only way to get over his fear was with preparation. His wife, Rose, said he still brings work home almost every night.

He played basketball, lettering all four years as a point guard known for setting up plays. He was voted runner-up for most intelligent boy. That is his style -- smart but not in a way that draws too much attention.

He studied political science at the University of Utah and law at Stanford. Not long after graduating, he joined the firm of Jim Rogers, now chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

“He's about the smartest person I've ever met,” Rogers said. “He's also the most understated. You have to use thumbscrews to get him to tell you he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and went to Stanford Law School.”

Rogers remembered Woodbury's ability to read for lengths of time that would make others go blind.

“We used to put mirrors under his nose to make sure he was breathing,” Rogers said. “We used to say he could always model for one of the mortuaries here and no one would know the difference between him at the office and him in the coffin.”

Woodbury's wife said she couldn't understand how her husband could relax after studying for finals by reading a book.

“I would say, ‘How can you even look at a written page?'”

In 1981 Reagan appointed Clark County Commissioner Bob Broadbent to a position in the Interior Department, leaving Gov. Bob List to appoint a Republican in the district. Woodbury's old classmate, Rogich, List's campaign manager, recommended Woodbury for the appointment. Others, such as Sloan, echoed Rogich's recommendation.

Since then, the nondescript Woodbury has taken on some of the flashiest and most ambitious projects in the county's history. The expansion of McCarran International Airport was among the first.

Former Commissioner Thalia Dondero, now a university system regent, served with Woodbury in the early 1980s.

“People said, ‘Why ... are you building three football fields of baggage area? You overdid the parking,'” Dondero remembered.

Now McCarran is expected to reach capacity in 2011 and the county is planning a second airport in the Ivanpah Valley.

“All of us thought it was overbuilt,” Dondero said. “It wasn't. It could have been bigger.”

Since then, Woodbury has helped create the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, and gotten it funded with a quarter percent sales tax, helping to tame the devastating flash floods that traditionally plagued Southern Nevada.

In 1990 he led the campaign for a ballot initiative to fund transportation with a collection of sales and property, and jet and motor vehicle fuel taxes. Without that funding, there would be no Interstate 215 or Las Vegas Beltway, no public bus system and far fewer improvements to the Strip corridor.

Some thought he was crazy at the time for suggesting that local government needed $100 million a year for roads.

“Of course, that's a drop in the bucket now,” he said. Statewide, transportation officials have suggested Nevada is facing a shortfall of $3 billion to $4 billion needed for highways and other road improvements.

“The needs keep outstripping the resources,” Woodbury said.

In 2002, he led another successful ballot initiative to fund transportation.

His success on those initiatives is impressive in a state known for shunning tax increases.

Rogers, who protested his law partner's decision to take the commission job, said , in hindsight, the community needed Woodbury.

“I don't know what we would have done without him,” he said. “The whole thing might have fallen apart.”

Corruption is another issue that has plagued the commission during much of Woodbury's tenure.

Shortly after he joined the commission, FBI agents posed as businessmen and offered bribes to state legislators and county commissioners. Two commissioners -- Jack Petitti and Woodrow Wilson -- were convicted in that case.

During one tape recorded conversation, an undercover FBI agent asked Petitti whether any of his colleagues could be bought off. Petitti suggested several. When the agent asked about Woodbury, Petitti said: “Woodbury, huh. I wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole.”

Woodbury told the Sun this week that no one has ever tried to bribe him during his 26 years in office, a badge of honor considering that five of his former colleagues have been indicted since 2003 and police are investigating another.

Perhaps part of the reason is that Woodbury has, on several occasions, returned campaign contributions to donors who sent him a check outside an election cycle and in close proximity to a vote that could affect the donor.

But another likely explanation is that Woodbury is stubbornly happy with his current life, having passed up many opportunities to run for higher office despite pressure from party leaders.

Rogich, who still has a scar on his left foot from an encounter with a sprinkler head in Woodbury's front yard during a game of touch football, said: “He hasn't changed much. That's part of his charm. He is really the same person we knew in high school.”

Or as Woodbury said in his usual understated manner: “I resist change.”

And with Woodbury, it seems things never change. In fact, he was meeting this week with gaming officials, feeling them out about the possibility of another ballot initiative to fund transportation, since lawmakers and the governor came up with a little less than $1 billion during this year's session.

In 2008 he'll be seeking a sixth and final term, although not for all the same reasons that he used to run. A father of seven, he used to take stock of the county's needs and feel that there was so much left to be done. Now, though, he knows better.

“There will always be unfinished business,” he said. “Now I know it will always be a work in progress.”

Tony Cook can be reached at 259-2320 or at [email protected].