Editorial: Sentence says: Crime pays

Thursday, July 19, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

F or her years as a central figure in a corrupt band of Clark County commissioners, for her betrayal of her constituents and for her fidelity to a sleazy, bribes-paying strip club owner, Erin Kenny was sentenced Wednesday in federal court to 30 months in prison and a $129,000 fine.

It's a sentence that, frankly, makes our skin crawl.

It is now clear Kenny had sought public office not to represent the people of her district, but to remorselessly enrich herself. This blatant sellout of the public deserves a sentence that cries out: Betray your public office, go to prison for a long, long time!

The light sentence, requested by federal prosecutors who said they needed her testimony to root out more corruption, actually says: Crime pays.

Kenny's reign as one of the most corrupt and disliked public officials in local history ended in July 2003 when she pleaded guilty to taking up to $30,000 in bribes, in exchange for her favorable votes, from strip club kingpin Michael Galardi.

Kenny testified in the corruption trials of former Clark County Commissioners Mary Kincaid-Chauncey and Dario Herrera. Another fellow commissioner, Lance Malone, who acted as a bagman for Galardi, agreed to a plea bargain, as did Galardi. All are serving time in federal prisons.

Kenny also testified in the recently concluded trial of real estate consultant Don Davidson. She accused Davidson of giving her $3,000 a month for nearly three years for her vote in favor of a neighborhood casino. She also said he gave her $200,000 for pushing through a zoning change that allowed construction of a pharmacy that residents had opposed.

Agreeing they could not trust her, jurors in the Davidson trial did not convict him of the charges related to Kenny's testimony. And with the mounds of wiretap evidence that the FBI collected on all four corrupt commissioners, Kincaid-Chauncey and Herrera could likely have been convicted without her testimony.

We think Kenny's testimony, undermined by her self-diagnosed "memory loss," was of little value. We wish U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson had imposed a harsher sentence than a veritable slap on the wrist.

Many more years would have been appropriate in our view, along with an order that every dishonest dime she collected be recovered.