Deregulator: Alive since '85!

Wha' happen? Not a lot, actually, in Tuesday's City Council meeting on the Wendell Williams fiasco. City Manager Doug Selby kept his job, which means that that Williams' city position is probably safe now as well, since Selby devised Williams' "last chance" deal. (The deal clearly upset Mayor Oscar Goodman, but not enough for him to recommend that Selby get the ax.) Goodman did an OK job as the prosecuting attorney, if you will, interrogating Williams, the city auditor and other employees who reviewed Williams' time records. Goodman eventually conceded that, since the council lacked the authority to compel sworn testimony from people who don't work for the city, and several of the key players in this melodrama aren't on the city payroll, the council couldn't determine who was telling the truth. Did Williams falsify time records in violation of city policy? Or were his time cards filled out for him by others, as he claimed Tuesday ... and was t...

A big week for Las Vegas ... or not Tuesday, the Las Vegas City Council will consider the fates of Wendell Williams, his former supervisor at the Department of Neighborhood Services Sharon Segerblom and potentially City Manager Doug Selby and Deputy Manager Betsy Fretwell. Mayor Oscar Goodman told my colleague Steve Sebelius (link forthcoming): "I want Tuesday to be the day Las Vegas acquits itself." Good luck, your honor. Williams has become the Neutron Bomb of Nevada: He kills careers but leaves institutions standing. Barely. Friday, he claimed that, in exchange for getting a promotion from the city, he shepherded a bill through the 2001 Legislature which annexed territory into Las Vegas, increasing its tax base. No one else agrees with that accounting, because if it's true, this is tantamount to extortion, which could ensnare Goodman, former City Manager Virginia Valentine, and a host of other current and former city employees in the dragnet. The threat here from Will...