Friday, June 13, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman threatened Thursday to oust board members of the troubled Las Vegas Housing Authority if they can't get their act together.
Goodman delivered the ultimatum before a special meeting of the housing board that was to consider firing its recently hired Executive Director Parvis Ghadiri.
That decision had to be put on hold when board member Dewain Steadman walked out of the meeting after roll call, leaving the two remaining members of the five-member board who had showed up for the meeting short of a quorum.
In related news, Goodman sent a letter to Mel Martinez, Housing and Urban Development Department secretary, calling for "a full operational audit" of the Las Vegas Housing Authority and asking HUD to "conduct a training session of the complete board within 30 days" of his new appointments of board members.
Goodman has tentatively set 1:30 p.m. Monday as the time he will announce a replacements for Steadman, the voice of dissent on the board, and Robert Forbuss. Steadman's term expired June 1, and Forbuss' term expires June 25. The next meeting of the Housing Authority is Tuesday.
Goodman also said that should Housing Authority Chairman Michael McDonald, the Las Vegas City Councilman who lost in his re-election bid to political newcomer Janet Moncrief earlier this month, also decide to step down, he is ready to replace him as well.
"My powers as mayor of Las Vegas are to fill vacancies on the board and, in cases of malfeasance or lack of performance, (call a hearing) to show cause" why commissioners should not be removed, Goodman said to the remaining board members, Christopher Hoye and Beatrice Turner. McDonald and Turner are Goodman appointees.
After the hearing, Goodman declined to say which commissioners he would single out should the proposed HUD training session fail to turn the board around. But the only members such action could apply to are Hoye, a Metro Police lieutenant, and Turner, because their four-year terms are not about to expire.
Turner, who was appointed in November, said Goodman asked her to resign before the meeting. She said she told him she would not.
"I have no problem with taking the training," she said. "But the whole board should be trained together."
Turner said she has done her best since she was appointed and that she was not on the board when controversial contracts were approved -- contracts that were severely criticized in a HUD report released this week.
Steadman denied a report published this morning that said Goodman asked for his resignation.
"That wouldn't make any sense because my term has expired," Steadman said. "I have asked for a retraction."
Attempts to reach Hoye were not successful.
Elaine Sanchez, spokeswoman for the mayor, confirmed that Goodman met with the three commissioners prior to Thursday's meeting but that the subjects of those conversations were private.
The last time a "show-cause" hearing was held to oust Housing Authority board members was during the turmoil of the late 1980s, when HUD conducted an investigation into the authority illegally charging tenants of low-income housing monthly rentals for stoves and refrigerators in their apartments.
That incident ended in an audit that forced the agency to repay tenants $400,000 and led to the eventual resignation of Art Sartini, who had spent 16 years as executive director. It also led to show-cause hearings for then-commissioners Dr. James Jones and Robert Gordon, who had supported Sartini.
Then-Mayor Ron Lurie ordered Gordon and Jones before a hearing conducted by then-Councilman Bob Nolen in November 1989. The commissioners were accused of ineffectiveness and neglect of duty.
After a combined 44 years on the board, Gordon and Jones were removed from their positions when Nolen sustained Lurie's allegations after several days of hearings.
It closed a chapter on one of the authority's darkest hours, but longtime observers say that period that is being rivaled by what is happening today.
The most recent problems include:
-- The release of the HUD report critical of contracting and oversight procedures regarding the Housing Authority's handling of five contracts from January 1999 through June 2002 that were worth $158,705. They included a controversial $36,000 public relations contract to former Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera in 2001 that was labeled an ineligible expenditure of federal funds in the HUD report. The report also was critical of late Executive Director Frederick Brown's leadership and it questioned whether the authority board properly oversaw him.
-- Metro Police investigating the apparent theft of eight housing authority files containing financial and travel records from a room at the Housing Authority offices at 340 N. 11th St. that had a door lock that had been broken for at least a month, Metro Police said. File cabinets also were not locked, leaving police with few ways to solve the crime because anybody with access to the building could have taken the documentation, investigators said.
Steadman, who voted against some of the contracts in the HUD report, said outside Thursday's meeting his decision to leave was an intentional maneuver to protect Ghadiri. Steadman has been a longtime supporter of Ghadiri's.
"I was not going to stand by and watch an innocent man be railroaded," Steadman said. Hoye and Turner had been critical of Ghadiri's performance in his five months on the job after he was unanimously approved as director in January. Ghadiri, who has been with the agency eight years, had served as interim director since Brown died of a heart attack last June.
Forbuss, a lobbyist, who had been in Carson City at the special session of the Legislature, was absent Thursday as was McDonald, who earlier this week appeared before a federal grand jury investigating alleged public corruption.
Ghadiri declined to comment on the advice of his attorney.
After Goodman's address, which was received with much applause by the packed house comprised mostly of Housing Authority tenants and longtime community activists, Hoye and Turner continued the meeting with citizen participation, hearing often angry criticisms from speakers.
Joe Maviglia, longtime City Hall activist, called the housing board "an oversight group that needs oversight. You can give them all the training that is available out there, but if someone doesn't monitor what they are doing, you will still have problems. They have to answer to someone for their actions."
Supporters of Ghadiri, who call him by his nickname Paul, said after the meeting they were pleased with Goodman's decision.
Marie Lemos-Doran, a one-time member of the Housing Authority's Voluntary Compliance Agreement Oversight Committee that was established in the 1990s in the wake of the appliance rental scandal, said: "Paul is a very honorable man and the board should give him time to prove himself."
Jane Martin, a resident of the Robert Gordon senior housing complex and a longtime activist for human and animal rights, said: "The apathy this board has had for its tenants needs to change. It is vital for the news media to remain on top of this story."
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