Transparency. Reason. Putting citizens first. These necessary core principles are rapidly declining with the new Clark County council and senior bureaucrats.
ClarkCounty.info reported this trend a few weeks ago, and it’s getting worse. We’ve had multiple, overlapping reports of the temporary county manager Mark McCauley’s tight and largely inappropriate back-channel collusion with councilors Boldt, Stewart, and Olson. The isolation of the two conservative councilors, Mielke and Madore, continues to increase. We understand that McCauley—the official conduit to other county staff—either won’t process or slow-walks some information requests from these councilors. The politicians and senior bureaucrats are brazenly reclaiming power for the less than 0.1% of local citizens who make up key players in the legacy Clark County political establishment.
A critically important primary duty of the new County Council to select and hire a new County Manager. This is the top bureaucrat and is the only position the councilors have legal authority to control, based on the new County Charter. Therefore it’s rather important that the council exercise diligence to hire the right person and have no obstacles in their way in the event this person needs to be removed.
ClarkCounty.info previously reported serious concerns about Mark McCauley, the current temporary county manager. Since then, there’s been no sign of a proper search being organized to locate a suitable county manager. If a search was to be conducted, it would have surely started by now, as the council is required to complete this process in the next few months. Specific issues are:
- Poor track record in searches for senior positions: ClarkCounty.info looked into the processes used in recent years to hire senior bureaucrats. All senior positions in the last few years have apparently been given to ‘insiders’. The only exception was the hiring of the Director of IT, which did have a formal external search—although we’ve learned it was largely a facade for another political employee selection. This incestuous approach to staffing leads to the political bureaucrats only hiring people known to be complicit to the larger direction of the local political ‘machine’. This will almost always exclude Independent thinkers or people with a strong sense of ethics, as the workings of such political machines regularly require participants to subordinate ethics and good judgment to the political machine’s self-interest.
- Employee contract with multi-year protection: As reported previously, new councilor Julie Olson advocates a contract with multiyear protection clause for McCauley, and by extension obviously doesn’t advocate for a proper candidate search. This is either cronyism, incompetence or both. Remember that the councilors have no control over county employees except in the selection, direction, and removal of this top county employee. Eliminating the ability to easily remove this county manager is truly an egregious act of corruption to protect their ‘insider,’ who in turn will protect them. This represents the typical scheming of self-interested bureaucracy. This sort of corrupt self-interest is literally destroying America at all political levels.
- Facade of an employee search: ClarkCounty.info has been informed that County Council has commissioned an interview of selected parties to establish opinions about temporary county manger McCauley. Apparently the target interview list consists of individuals who will support the will of the establishment political machine. This is therefore an effort to misinform citizens—more dishonesty.
County councilors Boldt, Stewart, and Olson are behaving no differently than the big-government liberals that were replaced over the last ten years. This was expected of Councilor Boldt when he was elected. With the two others, their behavior and attitudes are nearly the worst case scenario for how things might have worked out. It’s a serious disappointment for those that want responsible and wise local government.
It’s a mistake to just give McCauley the top county job without a proper search. A multiyear contract for McCauley would be a much worse. This multiyear term in a contract acknowledges McCauley will need protection as he and others do their work to rebuild the arrogant big-government attitude in Clark County government. Councilors Boldt, Stewart, and Olson’s allegiance to self-interested local government will become perfectly clear if a multiyear term is included.