Conflicts of interest could bring more than ethics complaints

I've never thought much of ethics commissions.

It's not the folks who serve on the commissions. They have always seemed bright, dedicated and well-meaning. Theirs is a largely thankless job. Although they sometimes are accused of playing politics, over the years I've found ethics commissioners are often the most ethical folks in the hearing room.

It's the mission of ethics commissions that gives me heartburn. While designed to keep politicians honest, too often ethics complaints wind up providing cover for elected officials with clever attorneys. Instead of being hog-tied by the public corruption case, politicians wind up in the cat's cradle of the ethics imbroglio.

With a few notable exceptions, the toughest punishment an unethical politician receives is delivered by a Review-Journal headline writer. Embarrassment, a scolding finger, a ripper headline used in a political mailer few will read: This is often the price to be paid by slippery politicians.

Not that I'm calling Las Vegas City Councilman and union representative Steve Ross slippery, you understand. "Slippery" would connote a higher level of political deftness than Ross has shown.

On Friday, the Nevada Ethics Commission ruled in a 4-1 vote that the Ward 6 councilman and organized labor pitchman had a conflict of interest with his involvement in the contract negotiations to build a new city hall. It's important to note that the commission determined Ross' violation wasn't willful. (A willful violation would hold the threat of actual punishment.)

My favorite quotes as reported by Review-Journal reporter Alan Choate come from Tyson Wrensch, one of three Ward 6 residents who filed the complaint against Ross, the secretary-treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council: "It gives citizens like me hope that we can make a difference."

And the difference is?

In the future, I suppose Ross must be extra careful not to carry quite so much water for his friends in the building trades. Although Ross was prudent to ask for the official opinions, thus establishing a level of plausible deniability, future missteps will be harder to explain away. They also are bound to attract the attention of investigators who use the United States Criminal Code as their playbook and not Nevada's hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil ethics tradition.

The challenge for Ross is simple: With government construction contracts more prized than ever in a bad economy, as time goes on he will feel pressure to assist his union allies. That also holds the potential of big problems for other members of the council and County Commission who have benefited from organized labor's substantial political organization skills.

Take County Commissioner Tom Collins, for instance, whose efforts on behalf of unionized Las Vegas Paving to win a road-widening project over nonunion Fisher Sand and Gravel should win him organized labor's Man of the Year award. (Especially because Fisher underbid Las Vegas Paving by more than $4 million.)

But the litigation that has followed Collins' commission performance has been costly and embarrassing to the county at a time it's supposedly focused on fiscal sobriety.

In the future, getting caught riding too hard for the union brand could mean far more than an ethics commission scolding. With the increased use of the honest services fraud statute by FBI agents in public corruption cases, it's unwise for any elected official to forget for whom he works.

Ross won election in 2005 on the political wings of his labor brothers. No sin in that, but he has to make a concerted effort to be more than a grateful union man. There are eyes watching -- and not just those of citizens such as Wrensch, who supported Ross' opponent in the last election.

Flawed messenger though the critic may be, when he said, "The best thing for him to do is to pick a job," I think he was onto something.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.