What was Henderson Council thinking?

A District Court judge’s dismissal last week of a complaint from the city of Henderson complaint against would-be arena developer Chris Milam is certainly not the last chapter of this sorry saga. But it does reinforce the notion that city officials radically failed in their duty to properly vet this increasingly fantastical deal in the first place.

The language of the city’s pleadings — accusing Milam and his partners of “breathtaking fraud,” lies and of being “no stranger to fraud” — calls to mind the old legal saw: If the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; if neither are on your side, pound the table.

The city, undaunted by the dismissal, insists it will re-file the complaint with new evidence, and pounds the table thusly: “While the city has just barely lifted the manhole to the sewer under which the Milam Defendants are lying in wait, the stench emanating is already overwhelming.”

But in accusing Milam and his partners, the city also indicts itself: Milam’s troubled legal history in Las Vegas was well-known before Henderson officials responded to his courting for the most recent in a string of failed Milam arena projects. If the stench of breathtaking mendacity was there, it was there from the beginning. Henderson leaders simply chose to hold their noses in the hopes a deal — the terms of which would have caused the likes of Bernie Madoff to blush — would come to fruition.

Instead of proceeding skeptically, perhaps insisting Milam have a signed deal with a stadium anchor tenant in hand before the city would lend its imprimatur to the transfer of Bureau of Land Management acreage for the project, the city dived in enthusiastically without performing the most basic due diligence. Whatever the fraud that may have attended this deal — and those allegations have yet to be proven — the inescapable fact remains that any loss the city may suffer would not have been possible without the city’s willing cooperation.

Milam attorney Terry Coffing surmises that the city is embarrassed at mishandling the deal. “They got some egg on their face. They could have fixed it, but they didn’t,” Coffing said.

The court battle will continue, but no one — especially no Henderson voter — should be in the dark: The city’s leadership must own a healthy share of responsibility for the disaster that this arena project has become.