Who’ll be the next in line?

Lynette Boggs presumably made a last-ditch appeal to avoid indictment when she gave secret testimony before a county grand jury Tuesday.

But it appears she failed to gain any new converts, as the grand jury Wednesday confirmed District Attorney David Roger's June indictment of the former Clark County commissioner on two felony counts each of perjury and filing of false documents.

Ms. Boggs, who spent most of her political career as Lynette Boggs McDonald, never had much of a cheering section among the valley's labor unions. She opposed the recent massive pay and benefit hikes for Las Vegas police.

So as last year's election approached, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association and Culinary Local 226 hired a private investigator to place Ms. Boggs McDonald under surveillance, checking on rumors she lived outside her district.

The union came up with six weeks of hidden-camera video footage showing the county commissioner picking up the newspaper in her bathrobe, taking out the trash, and coming and going with her children from a home outside Commission District F -- a different address than that listed on her sworn affidavit of candidacy.

The union's private investigator also obtained a sworn statement from the commissioner's former baby sitter, who said that $1,230 which Ms. Boggs McDonald had listed as campaign expenditures actually paid for baby-sitting.

She then lost her re-election bid.

Compared with the bribery that brought down former Commissioners Erin Kenny, Dario Herrera, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey and Lance Malone, this is lightweight stuff. Furthermore, Ms. Boggs, 43, deserves a presumption of innocence. But those who blatantly stick their finger in the eye of the law must be held to account.

That said, let's not miss the true significance of this event, which goes far beyond the kind of wrist slap a first-time offender can probably expect on such charges.

Only the terminally naive could believe Ms. Boggs is the first local politician to claim an "address of convenience." Plenty of other local office-holders have committed this offense -- and their sworn affidavits of candidacy are still on file.

The district attorney and his staff shouldn't wait for political adversaries with deep pockets to serve up their next case of this nature with a bow on top.

A fair number of other current and former office-holders are likely comparing the calendar to the statute of limitations, now that the precedent has been set.

Nor should they be allowed to sleep easy, just because they've been "sticking with the union."