Columnist Steve Carp: Commission proves you can run, hide

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be about golf and golf courses. Instead it was about good ol' boy politics with a little boxing thrown in.

Problem was, when it came time to stand and fight, four of the Clark County Commissioners decided to duck out of the ring instead of putting up their dukes.

After spending the past few months backpedaling on a decision to award the rights to build a golf course at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, it was put-up-or-shut-up time on Grand Central Parkway Tuesday.

Three commissioners -- Erin Kenny, Myrna Williams and Yvonne Atkinson Gates -- were willing to put up, voting to give Billy Walters the right to develop 155 acres of publicly owned land south of Russell Road and build the course. Three others -- Bruce Woodbury, Lance Malone and Mary Kincaid -- abstained, citing potential conflicts of interest after consulting with legal counsel. A fourth, Lorraine Hunt, abstained on other grounds.

Essentially, the Gang of Four shut up. Heaven forbid someone might squawk if they did their jobs, even though the never-ending questions of ethics with this supervisory group clings to it like a T-shirt following an August thunderstorm.

But to wimp out and abstain is weak. You're politicians. All of you have "connections" and "friends." How do you think you got elected? That's what makes this so laughable. And it makes you wonder how anything in Clark County ever gets done.

Heaven forbid something important like education, protective services or other quality-of-life matters came before the commissioners. We'd really be hurting.

I'm not going to argue the merits of the three proposals here. First of all, it's moot, now that Walters received the bid. Second, each plan had positives to it and it's too bad all three can't be accommodated somehow.

If a Formula One race brought in thousands of tourists and everyone got financially healthy for a weekend, fine. If there was a nice tennis facility to go with a golf course and bring a "country club" feel to the average Joe, great.

What we're going to get is another upscale golf course, which is all well and good. But the truth is it will probably be out of reach for most of our wallets and "affordable" will likely mean locals being allowed to play from noon to 4 p.m. in July and August.

One thing is for certain -- the best interests of the entire community were not served in this instance.

Maybe it's too idealistic, but couldn't this land be used for everyone's benefit, such as a park with a lake, some trees and picnic areas, some ballfields for the kids and the adults and maybe a community center?

But it would never happen because no one would make money off a project like that.

Instead, the south Strip gets 27 holes of golf, and four county commissioners think they can look themselves in the mirror today and say they did the right thing.

Yeah, they did the right thing, if right means listening to legal hacks telling you to avoid a confrontation with the state ethics commission instead of doing your job and taking a stand, popular or not, which is what the voters elected you to do.

Joe Louis was wrong. You can run. And you can hide.

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