Former Las Vegas Councilman Steve Miller helped put out a political mailer, and then lied to reporters about doing it?

Man, you just can’t trust that Miller. Did you know that cocaine was once found in a car Miller was driving?

Actually, that’s not true. But that was an allegation in a creatively edited flier put out by the Jan Jones for mayor campaign, which defeated Miller’s bid for the top job in 1991.

Miller sued over the flier, and pursued Jones through the halls of justice for more than a decade, ultimately losing his lawsuit. But he blamed the flier for the end of his political career.

But that’s not why Miller’s political career is over.

It’s over because he lies.

The Las Vegas Sun reported today that Miller authored a flier for one Priscilla Flores, who’s running for Clark County Commission against incumbent Myrna Williams and challenger Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani. Flores lives with her parents in the tony Red Rock Country Club tony Las Vegas Country Club.

The flier accuses Williams of being “asleep at the switch,” literally, with an unflattering photo of the commissioner appearing to doze at a county commission meeting. The flier quotes Flores as saying she can’t believe Williams didn’t have a clue that four fellow commissioners were involved in the G-sting scandal.

And Giunchigliani, who has backed lessening Nevada’s draconian penalties for marijuana possession, is alleged to be promoting marijuana. (There’s a photo of her in front of a sign with a quote saying “We have the right to use marijuana.” We do, but that’s another story.)

Initially, Miller denied to Sun reporters Tony Cook and J. Patrick Coolican that he was the author, even after they found an electronic file linking him to the mailer. Later, however, he admitted it.

“I didn’t want people to know I was doing that. The reason I say that is because I have political enemies.”

That’s putting it mildly.

What Cook and Coolican didn’t report is that Miller has lied before, under strikingly similar circumstances. When political neophyte Janet Moncrief was preparing to cast her very first vote ever — for herself in the race against then-Las Vegas Councilman Michael McDonald — Miller was helping out on the campaign. One of his duties: Literature.

But when reporters asked him about it, Miller lied. He said he didn’t have a damn thing to do with the campaign.

But after Moncrief got elected and forgot who Miller was, he confessed, and alleged he’d been paid off the books for his work. Eventually, Moncrief was indicted and recalled from office, later settling felony charges of filing false documents with the state (i.e. inaccurate campaign reports). At the time, Miller said he regretted very much misleading reporters, realizing it had severely damaged whatever credibility he might have had when he finally stood up to tell the truth.

These days, he’s not so apologetic.

“It may offend some power brokers, but extraordinary methods must be used to overcome the million-dollar campaign war chests of incumbent politicians like Michael McDonald and Myrna Williams,” Miller wrote. “Otherwise, anointed candidates always prevail.”

Bullshit.

McDonald, for example, was beaten by Moncrief because voters had been treated to a years-long skein of negative publicity about ethics. And Moncrief was taken out by voters in a recall once they learned she was the most ineffective council member ever elected. And let’s not forget that former Councilman Frank Hawkins was unseated by McDonald because of ethics problems, too., And all four G-sting commissioners — Dario Herrera, Erin Kenny, Lance Malone and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey were all bounced from office or denied bids for higher office because voters thought of them as unethical.

No, the voters can be trusted to fairly adjudge a politicians’ honesty, if politicians and their consults deign to be honest with the voters in the first place.

Instead, Miller lies and helps candidates in secret, claiming some higher justification for covering his tracks. It’s bush-league and it’s wrong. And of anybody in Las Vegas, Miller should know what it’s like to be stung by an unfair, out-of-context flier.

Each day, Miller sends out e-mails documenting sins great and small in Las Vegas, usually connected to strip club owner (and now confessed tax cheat) Rick Rizzolo. Although we at Various Things & Stuff are wary of his facts, his moral outrage is in the right place. We enjoy reading the missives, if nothing else.

But a man who lies so regularly and so easily, who fails to learn his lessons about lying and who claims — ridiculously — that he’s justified in lying because he’s up against the big money machine? That kind of a man just can’t be trusted.

And the thing is, Miller should know better.