Authorities giving Boggs time to report

Local authorities expected former Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs to turn herself in Tuesday to face charges of lying on campaign documents.

But as the day wore on, Boggs was a no-show at Clark County Detention Center, apparently still en route from a missionary trip to West Africa.

"I want to give her ample opportunity to turn herself in," said Jerry Hafen, deputy chief of the Nevada Division of Investigation, which led the criminal probe.

Hafen said he hadn't heard from Boggs' lawyer Tuesday about whether she had returned to the United States. He planned to call her lawyer, Bill Terry, this morning for an update on Boggs' plans to surrender.

"If he doesn't return my calls, I guess we'll have to go out and find her," Hafen said.

District Attorney David Roger charged Boggs, 43, Monday with lying on a pair of campaign documents she filed last year during her bid for re-election to her District F commission seat. She faces two counts each of perjury, which carries a one- to four-year prison term, and filing false documents, which carries a one- to five-year prison term.

On her declaration of candidacy form, Boggs said she lived at 6386 Grays River Court, a 1,623-square-foot home inside her district.

But her former assistant, Linda Ferris, told investigators that Boggs never lived at that address and concocted a paper-trail scheme to make it look like she did, according to a police report.

Authorities believe Boggs actually lived at 3646 Dutch Valley Drive, a 3,661-square-foot house just outside the district in the southwest part of the valley.

Boggs was also charged with lying about campaign payments she made to a baby sitter, Kelly Mcleod. Boggs listed the $1,230 in payments as campaign expenses related to special events.

Boggs eventually repaid the campaign for the payments and said she believed paying a baby sitter while she was at campaign events was legal.

Both allegations surfaced after two local labor unions hired a private investigator to track Boggs. The investigator shot video footage of Boggs getting the newspaper, retrieving a trash can and other everyday activities at the Dutch Valley Drive home outside her district.

The Las Vegas Police Protective Association and the Culinary union released the footage to the media, and it helped Boggs' challenger, Susan Brager, cruise to an easy win over the incumbent.

Two weeks later Boggs co-founded the FaithWorks Foundation, a Christian group dedicated "to provide shelter, feed the hungry, cover the naked and free the oppressed," according to its Web site.

A woman who answered the phone at FaithWorks' Las Vegas office referred calls to Boggs' lawyer, who declined to comment on the case.

Boggs took her recent trip to Africa to meet other FaithWorks members in Ghana. In a video clip posted on the group's Web site, Boggs is preaching to a roomful of young Ghanians. In another clip she stands on the beach at a former slave-trading port.

"Today was probably one of the most emotional days of my life as I visited the 'Route of the Slaves,' " Boggs wrote on the site. "I had returned to West Africa to break the yoke of the generational curse -- the curse to cause a soul to forget its identity and heritage -- that had been placed on my ancestors before boarding slave ships to the Americas many centuries ago. But by the grace of God, He provided a passage for me to return, to remember, to weep, and be restored. To say I'm emotionally spent is an understatement having walked through the 'Gate of No Return.' "