It Corruptapalooza 2006!

Not only do we have four — count ‘em — former Clark County Commissioners about to go to trial on political corruption charges, not only do we have a state controller who was impeached running for state treasurer, not only do we have a City Council mired in a land scandal that ensnares not one but two administrations, and not only do we have a mayor appealing a finding he’s unethical, but…

• … we have a state senator who allegedly used her title to get in the door around the country in order to advance her business, selling surplus cars on the Internet.

• …we have a county recorder who allegedly used her position in government to sell county documents to businesses who could profit from an early look at the information.

Oh, my.

Although the word is that Metro Police has started a new unit to investigate public officials — patterned on the FBI’s public integrity unit — that’s not the case. The criminal intelligence section, cops who traditionally spy on organized crime figures and look at certain major cases, is handling the Deane investigation.

As far as we’re concerned, both situations could easily have been avoided. State Sen. Sandra Tiffany should never have been allowed to do business with the state, which is prohibited by law. She was able to get that work thanks to a made-to-order legal opinion, but it was still wrong.

And Clark County Recorder Frances Deane should have been arrested in 2003, shortly after she was elected, when she and several co-conspirators tried to set up a business that would have sold publicly available documents on the Internet. This subjugation of her public duties to her private interests could violate any number of laws, and her conspiracy with others to do so is also a crime. Instead, she admitted a willful ethics violation, and paid a $5,000 fine.

Plus, from reading the quotes she’s offered to the Review-Journal over the years, there’s a good possibility Deane is nuts. Not that that’s a disqualification for public office, or anything.

The R-J’s new political reporter, Molly Ball, wrote a piece today discussing the many ways that Republicans Tiffany and Deane could hurt their party. (Not to mention impeached-but-running-for-higher-office Controller Kathy Augustine, who is also a Republican.) The Democrats are right; there’s plenty of culture-of-corruption stuff here, But let’s not forget, shall we, that three of the four ex-commissioners about to go on trial are Democrats. It seems neither party is totally scandal-free. Besides, the problem is the lack of respect for the public trust that is elected office, not party affiliation.

Speaking of the corruption scandal, Review-Journal columnist Jane Ann Morrison boldly declared today that “For years, women have done well in judicial races … because voters tend to believe women are more honest.” (Oh, really?)

She’s shocked and saddened to learn — after the recent revelations about Tiffany and Deane — that “Equal rights apparently means some women have the potential to be just as stupid and corrupt as men.”

Let’s hope this shattering of innocence by the crushing weight of the obvious doesn’t hurt too much.

• Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman told the Las Vegas Sun for today’s edition that he won’t make public contributions to his political action committee, dubbed OPAC. Apparently, there’s a loophole in state law that allows PAC donations to remain secret, so long as they’re not used for political purposes.

Since Goodman is apparently using PAC contributions to promote Las Vegas, he doesn’t have to say who’s giving him the money. And he won’t, the Sun says, “out of concern that some members of the media would try to misrepresent it if it was released.”

Translation: There are some very controversial donations in the mayor’s kitty that would become news if they were made public.

It was a different story back on March 22, 2005, when the PAC was being formed. Billy Rogers of Southwest Strategies, who helped the mayor form the group, said the organization would have to report its expenses and donations at least once per year. (And this was after the mayor decided the group wouldn’t make political donations, too.)

“Having a PAC means it will be transparent,” Rogers said at the time.

Maybe he forgot to check with Goodman, to whom transparency is fast becoming a really bad thing. Then again, that probably wouldn’t have helped. Goodman has been known to contradict himself within the space of a single sentence.

Still, OPAC is an interesting group. Rogers, who helped found it, was criticized in 2005 for putting out a flier slamming former client (and now Councilman) Steve Ross, after Rogers quit the campaign in a dispute with consultant Gary Gray. OPAC is ostensibly headed by former Councilman Michael Mack, who committed multiple ethical breaches while serving on the council and whose record was so bad, he elected to quit rather than seek re-election. And its primary beneficiary is Goodman, who has been found by the state Ethics Commission to have behaved unethically. (The mayor is appealing that finding.)

And now we learn that the mayor wants to keep the names of donors secret.

We can’t help but wonder if there’s anybody with a clean record affiliated with this group.