Jon Ralston on why it’s critical to put into context the case against Boggs

Friday, June 8, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

With yet another ex-member of the state's most powerful elected body tarred with felony charges, the broad brush now painting all county commissioners the color of corruption obscures the entire political palette.

Not all politicians are the same, nor are all crimes created equal. So as ex-Commissioner Lynette Boggs was arraigned this week on four charges related to where she really lived and whom she paid with campaign funds, some perspective is required. The problem with the current tableau is that the foreground is so dominated by G-Sting portraits that anyone else who enters the canvas blends into the picture.

Lynette Boggs is not Dario Herrera or Erin Kenny or Lance Malone or Mary Kincaid, all of whom are or will be serving prison time for taking bribes from strip club mogul Mike Galardi. She may not even be Yvonne Atkinson Gates, whose '90s greatest hits of soliciting casino bosses to set her up in business and later trying to set up her cronies in airport concessions may soon be surpassed by her new millennium offerings as law enforcement pores over her activities before she resigned from the County Commission. And Boggs certainly is not Bruce Woodbury, who has stood as an icon of rectitude for more than a quarter-century as too many of those around him were accused of ethical and criminal misdeeds.

Most elected officials, despite what many in the public and too many in the blogosphere eagerly believe, are not corrupt. But the system itself, with its relatively low salaries and low barrier to entry, induces the weak, the ambitious and the venal to act out. And it all depends on your definition of the word "corrupt" - you can be depraved without committing criminal acts; you can be unethical without being criminal.

For instance, Boggs shares some characteristics with Hererra and Kenny but not so much with Malone or Kincaid. She was not a simple pawn, as was Malone, nor was she a mixture of naivete and good old girl, as was Kincaid. But like Herrera and Kenny, Boggs was preternaturally ambitious and almost immediately was looking to ascend the political ladder.

Look at the pattern. Kenny went from the Assembly to the County Commission to a failed run for lieutenant governor. Herrera went from the Assembly to the commission to a failed run for Congress. Boggs went from the City Council to a failed run for Congress to the County Commission.

The difference, of course, is that what Boggs is accused of pales in comparison with what Herrera and Kenny did - take payments for public actions. Boggs has been charged with lying on forms about where she lived and what she paid her nanny for doing during her campaign. I do not suggest that if she is guilty that these crimes are excusable. But the felonies do not involve selling her vote for money, which I still argue is the de facto (and quite legal) effect in too many cases of campaign contributions funneled by lobbyists to elected officials. It's not that they are criminals per se; it's that they are too weak or too ambitious to resist when a major donor or surrogate comes calling.

The Boggs case is different in another respect, too. A couple of ruthless and determined special interests - the Culinary and the police unions - went to the lengths of hiring private eye David Groover to follow her and ultimately create a public sensation. Who were people going to believe - what Boggs was saying in her defense or the oft-played video of her in a pink bathrobe?

And, yet, I can assure you that if Groover's talents had been harnessed to track the whereabouts of other local government officials or a few legislators, he would have produced more memorable videos that could end political careers. So the question remains: Does the punishment fit the crime?

The sides are clear. One would claim that Boggs must face serious sanctions, perhaps even jail time, for filing false public documents. The other would say that having committed the mortal political sins of prevarication and hypocrisy (if that's all she has done), she already has faced the worst kind of damnation for an elected official - a return to private life.

The public will always, to an extent, paint the scene with that broad brush. But with a few other Dorian Grays doubtlessly running around free, I wonder when law enforcement might get around to clearing up the ever-murky picture of what corruption really looks like.