It’s her story vs. her story in the case against Boggs

Tony Cook and Barry M. Horstman

Friday, Sept. 14, 2007 | 7:35 a.m.

When Linda Ferris got a job with Lynette Boggs' 2006 county commission campaign, she had no idea that it would end with Boggs essentially kicking her out of her home.

But that's pretty much what happened, according to Ferris' testimony at a grand jury hearing last month.

That hearing, transcripts of which were released Thursday, led to an indictment of Boggs on two counts of filing a false document and two counts of perjury. The charges stem from accusations that she falsely claimed to be living in her district when she filed for re-election in May 2006, and that she lied about campaign funds that she used to pay her children's nanny.

In January 2006, Ferris was looking for a job in Las Vegas when Boggs, an old friend with whom she had lost contact for a couple of years, offered her a $3,000-a-month position as a personal assistant on her 2006 campaign team.

Ferris didn't know just how personal it would get.

As Ferris, a Southern California resident at the time, looked for a home in Southern Nevada, she was leaning toward the west side of the valley, she testified. But Boggs told her she needed to live in Boggs' commission district for convenience, Ferris said.

Shortly after Ferris moved into a rental house at 6386 Grays River Court in February 2006, Boggs said she needed to begin receiving mail at the home, Ferris said.

"At one point she said she needed to use my address," Ferris testified , " because she did not live in the district."

At the time, Ferris and others testified, Boggs was living in a larger home just outside her district on Dutch Valley Drive.

Boggs also began writing $400 personal checks to Ferris each month, which she had Ferris return to her in cash, Ferris said.

"She needed a paper trail" that made it appear Boggs was paying rent at the Grays River Court home, Ferris testified.

The situation was becoming "emotionally a little traumatic for me and I just didn't really want to be involved," Ferris said.

But things got even worse.

"She told me that there were rumors on the street that she in fact did not live in her district, so she insisted I go to New West Property Management and put her name as co-lessor," Ferris testified. "And this created more turmoil and conflict in me. And New West would not accommodate that request, instead they would only put her on the lease as a roommate, because I was the primary lessor. So they did that."

In June and July, Ferris started looking for another job.

"It became further compounded when she told me she was going to have to be staying at my place," Ferris testified. "And I did not want a roommate . I did not want anyone living with me, especially being forced, this situation being forced upon me, and so I very proactively was looking for other work."

Ferris found another job in California in August and arranged for friends to stay at her home for the remainder of its one-year lease, she said.

Boggs "became very angry and virtually fired me, told me I had to turn over, in e-mail, had to turn over the keys immediately to (Campaign Manager) Sarah (Nelson), had to do this, had to do that, take my cat, get out of the house. My house. And she wanted the lease transferred to her name," Ferris said.

Ferris gave in, had the lease transferred to Boggs and moved out in September.

Boggs also appeared before the grand jury and provided a diametrically opposed explanation from Ferris' on the crucial point of how much time the then-commissioner spent - or did not spend - at the Grays River Court residence when she claimed it as her primary residence on campaign forms.

When prosecutor Eric Jorgenson initially pressed her on whether she actually lived at the Dutch Valley house, Boggs' responded with a Clintonesque parsing of language.

"I don't know what you're defining as living," she said.

Although Ferris testified that Boggs never spent the night at the Grays River Court home before Ferris' departure, Boggs told the grand jury that through most of 2006, she divided her time between there and the Dutch Valley house that she and her husband shared until they separated early that year.

"I would spend the night there usually three or four nights a week," Boggs said of the Grays River Court home. But Boggs stressed that she was there every day to check her mail and for other reasons.

In her testimony, Boggs seeks to provide an innocent explanation for why video filmed by political opponents often showed her at the Dutch Valley home - the one outside her district - in the very early morning.

"I would stay a couple of nights a week at Dutch Valley with my children when they were in my custody," she said. Ferris had specifically asked her, Boggs testified, not to bring her children to the Grays River Court home.

Even on days when the children were with her husband, Boggs said, she would arrive at the Dutch Valley house before 7:30 a.m. out of concern for her 15-month-old daughter.

"I've gone through divorce, my parents were divorced, so I know the trauma that children can go through," she said. "I wanted my daughter to see her mommy every single day."

On a few occasions, Boggs said, she deliberately stayed away from the Grays River Court home because Ferris "needed the space" when her grandchildren visited or "planned to have romantic weekends with people that she was involved with."

Another reason she spent so much time at the Dutch Valley residence, Boggs said, stemmed from her impending divorce from her husband, Steve McDonald.

After moving out of the house in late February or early March 2006, McDonald, "in a legal maneuver," moved back into it in June, Boggs said. Boggs' attorney told her, she said, that McDonald's presence in the house, combined with her absence, could strengthen his hand in what she acknowledged became "a very ugly divorce."

"I spent a lot of time in that Dutch Valley residence in that time because of what was going on in the divorce and this dispute over who would possess (it)," she said.

Attacking another of the charges raised during her unsuccessful 2006 re-election bid, Boggs said she felt justified in using campaign funds to pay her children's nanny because her political appearances caused her to need a babysitter.

In using her campaign dollars in that way, Boggs said, she relied on a 2002 state attorney general's opinion and advice that she had received from her campaign team.

Following news coverage that questioned whether the nanny payments were a proper expenditure of political funds, Boggs reimbursed her campaign. Two of the checks she wrote to do so, however, bounced.

"Have you ever made good on them?" Jorgenson asked.

"Actually, no," Boggs replied.