Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.
Assemblyman Wendell Williams is alleging that Las Vegas officials promoted him in fall 2001 and arranged for his city pay during the 2001 Legislature in exchange for his help in passing an annexation bill.
Williams, D-Las Vegas, has been given a choice of resigning, appearing at a "name-clearing hearing," or being fired from his city job, he said after a meeting with city officials Thursday.
Williams said he won't resign, wants to get back to work and thinks the city is trying to "shut him down" to prevent his allegations from being investigated.
He said he plans to tell the City Council on Tuesday "how things really were in the Legislature, how they happened and the roles (the people involved) played."
Williams, Neighborhood Services Director Sharon Segerblom and Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, who used to work for Segerblom, were the targets of a city investigation that determined the two lawmakers improperly used sick time to supplement their pay while they were serving in the 2001 Legislature.
But Williams said Thursday that he was asked by city officials to help pass a bill during that session. He said that city lobbyists could not pass Assembly Bill 179, which allowed Las Vegas to annex county islands, pieces of land inside the municipal limits that were under the jurisdiction of Clark County.
At the time, the city and county were battling over control of that land. Although the city controlled sewer service to such areas, and provided such services as fire protection, the county had control over zoning.
"They came to me to pass the bill," Williams claims. He said he took the bill out of committee and talked to then-Las Vegas City Manager Virginia Valentine, who told him it was the city's priority. Williams said it was a bill worth millions of dollars for the city.
Valentine, who now is Clark County's assistant manager, tells a completely different story, however. She says that she told her lobbyists not to ask any special favors of Williams. She said he's now trying to raise other issues that deflect from the core point -- he took sick leave to fill out his salary while he was serving in the 2001 Legislature.
Valentine said she had a simple policy for people working with Williams and Arberry.
"I told the people who worked for me not to approach 'Moose' (Arberry) or Wendell and ask them to do anything because of the potential of perceived conflict," Valentine said. "At no time was Wendell ever asked to work on behalf of the city by me."
She also said the annexation bill "did not bring millions of dollars to the city of Las Vegas," and it was a "backstop" because the city and county were working out an agreement anyway.
"And speaking for myself and the lobbying team I worked with, none of us ever asked Wendell to carry that bill for us. That would have been inappropriate," Valentine said. "And it did not matter how important that bill was for the city, I would not compromise my personal ethics to offer a raise to someone in exchange for passing that bill."
Williams said he told the city's lobbying team to let him handle the bill.
He said at the same time, the City Council was going to approve a capital budget that did not include the Doolittle Center, a $10 million project that was completed this spring. Williams, who said the center was a key part of the West Las Vegas community, asked that the funding be restored. He said after he passed the annexation bill, it was.
Valentine disputes that scenario.
"So he's saying he extorted us for Doolittle? That just never happened," Valentine said. "If that happened, there were no conversations with me about it. To the best of my knowledge Wendell had nothing whatever to do with the parks capital plan. That was something negotiated among individual council members."
Williams said he spoke with Ward 5 Councilman Lawrence Weekly about the Doolittle project.
Weekly said it's likely he did discuss Doolittle with Williams, that it would have been natural because it was an important project in an area where their respective districts overlapped. In addition, they were in a group of black elected officials that met regularly.
But Weekly said he never discussed any sort of deal with Williams.
"I harped on the city that it was long overdue the city do something about Doolittle, but don't make this about annexation," Weekly said.
Dan Musgrove, who worked the bill as a lobbyist for the city, said city lobbyists "treated treated (Williams) as (they did) every other legislator. Virginia's direction to us was to deal with him as a legislator, not as a city employee, that's how we dealt with him. We didn't treat him differently than any other legislator as far as I was concerned. We asked for his support as we would work to get anybody's support."
However, he said, Williams did play a role in one part of the process, when the bill was in committee.
"When it was first heard, it had gotten hung up in a work session and he had spoken out in the regular hearing of the bill in support," Musgrove said. "He was in another committee and I got him to come back because we needed his vote. It was a tie vote on the motion to bring the bill out of committee or kill it, and we needed his vote to get it out of committee."
Former Assemblyman Doug Bache, D-Las Vegas, then chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, said "Wendell was interested in the bill more so than the average, but ... he had other bills he had a greater interest in."
For example, he said, Williams worked on a bill that created a Civilian Review Board for Metro Police.
Williams said he supported the annexation bill when it failed in 1999, but gave it an extra effort when asked by the city in 2001. He justified receiving money from the city while he was in the Legislature by saying, "when I was asked to do this, I was working."
Williams also said there was nothing wrong with him getting paid by the city, or receiving a promotion. "In my opinion, I was working, I should have gotten paid," he said.
When asked whether it was a conflict for him to be serving in the Legislature, getting paid by the city, and working on behalf of the city in his legislative capacity, he said, "it's not a conflict if it's in the best interest of the city."
He said the investigation and the attempted firing Thursday was because "they're trying to shut this down now, before this comes out."
It gets back to the city not having a policy to deal with a lawmaker who also was a city employee, his lawyer, Larry Semenza, said.
Williams said the way the city promoted him supports his claim that he helped the city during the 2001 Legislature.
He said the city did not follow normal procedure for his promotion, in which a supervisor would nominate him to a committee, which would consider and then forward the nomination to the city manager's office. In his case, his department director, Segerblom, did not sign his promotion, although she had recommended a salary increase.
"This came from the top down. My director didn't know anything about it," Williams said.
Laura Fitzsimmons, Sharon Segerblom's lawyer, also says the process "totally bypassed Sharon."
She questioned "why the city manager's office would create a special position and put Wendell in it when it wasn't something his manager had asked for."
The promotion was signed by a deputy city manager, according to a report by the city auditor's office.
Williams' comments came after he met with Las Vegas officials, who gave him three options Thursday morning, to resign, be fired or participate in a hearing in which he could attempt to make his case.
The city does not have an established policy for such a hearing. Claudette Enus, human resources director, said the city attorney's office was handling the situation. The city attorneys were not available for comment Thursday or this morning.
She said it was the first time in her three years at the city such a process had been used.
The city also called Segerblom to set up a meeting, but she declined.
"The procedure they want to engage in is march her around ... have her humiliated," Fitzsimmons said. "At this point, this is not work Sharon is obligated to undertake for the city."
Richard Segerblom, Sharon Segerblom's husband, said the day before that she would sue the city. He also filed an ethics complaint against Segerblom's supervisors, City Manager Doug Selby and Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell, claiming they have a conflict of interest and should not have been the ones to investigate allegations stemming from the way Williams and a former city colleague filled out time cards.
Fretwell owns a home with Christine Robinson, who is Selby's wife's boss at the Clark County air quality program.
The city manager's office would not comment on the complaint or other issues involved in the audit Thursday. Selby has called the charges a "desperate" attempt to deflect attention away from the issue of Sharon Segerblom's management of Williams.
Fretwell conducted the city's first investigation into time cards filed by Williams while he was serving in the 2003 Legislature. Williams agreed to pay back $6,700, but later claimed he did it because he was pressured by Segerblom, who in turn was pressured by the city manager's office.
Fretwell investigated that and other issues related to the matter and then recommended discipline up to or including termination.
In the course of that investigation, media requests for time cards filed by Williams and Assemblyman Morse Arberry resulted in the public disclosure that both had used large amounts of sick time to receive almost full-time pay from the city while serving in the 2001 Legislature. Sharon Segerblom, Williams and Arberry all worked in the same city department, Neighborhood Services.
An auditor's report that followed Fretwell's investigation indicated that Arberry, who no longer works for the city, and Williams received favorable treatment from Segerblom, and that they inappropriately used sick leave.
It also found that the city did not have a policy dealing with employees who are lawmakers, and it questioned the use of a "last-chance" agreement, typically used for union employees, in Williams' case.
The audit did not say who prepared the agreement.
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