Promoting wise and ethical local government is our mission at ClarkCounty.info. This has become a bit more difficult with the recent formalization of Mark McCauley as the County Manager.
This happened on June 7th thanks to the three councilors (Boldt, Olson, and Stewart) who have been leading the attempted return of power to the legacy Clark County establishment. In the last few months these people and a few other complicit senior bureaucrats went through the motions to give the appearance that McCauley was being thoughtfully reviewed, but it was all theater.
Mark McCauley has been the Acting County Manager for about 18 months. The extent of his unsuitability wasn’t fully evident until the three establishment councilors became the majority in January 2016. Together these people went on a slash and burn mission to rapidly reclaim power for the legacy Clark County establishment, to the detriment of the citizens. ClarkCounty.info has written extensively on this situation. A summary of the issues with McCauley are:
- Poor leadership: He’s a poor to marginal leader with a tendency to fly off the handle, yell and intimidate county employees. This was confirmed by numerous county employees.
- Inappropriate collusion: Before the new councilors were even official, McCauley was inappropriately colluding with them behind the scenes on plans to deconstruct the work of the prior council.
- Insubordination: McCauley has repeatedly shown his pettiness and arrogance to Councilors Mielke and Madore and others who resisted the establishment reset.
- Violations of public meeting laws: Many examples exist.
- Purge of Don Benton and other employees: This was clearly an act to clear out those who showed resistance to the legacy establishment’s aggressive agenda. McCauley had the gall to say this was only a cost savings exercise as he and his goons marched the terminated people off the county property like criminals. This story was of particular interest to our readers, with 1170 views in one day and 179 shares.
- Current and pending lawsuits: The brazen actions of McCauley, other senior bureaucrats, and the establishment councilors has created many legal problems for the county. This will probably be expensive for the taxpayers, and ClarkCounty.info will follow these events as they unfold.
Most of the above list is apparently of no concern to the Clark County political establishment so long as McCauley carries out their wishes. For the rest of us, he would have obviously been removed rapidly from further consideration.
Since we’re all stuck with McCauley for the indefinite future, we take a deep breath and recognize that eternal vigilance is the constant theme for citizens. Whether it’s McCauley or the many other corrupt and incompetent local politicians and senior bureaucrats, the job to monitor them, encourage them, or when necessary work to remove them will never go away completely. In this light his promotion shouldn’t discourage us. Instead, we’ll just keep a close eye on him and his complicit senior bureaucrats and highlight their corruption and incompetence as it occurs. We hope they’ll improve over time. If they don’t, enough public highlighting of their mischief will eventually take its toll and they’ll have to leave. It’s their choice, as the citizen resistance to this nonsense is only becoming more organized, less tolerant, and resolute.