EDITORIAL: Transparency, thy name isn’t North Las Vegas

North Las Vegas city officials are trying to justify the sweetheart deal they gifted a former employee at the expense of taxpayers. But the circumstances of this sloppy kiss betray their feigned innocence and heighten mistrust in government institutions.

Ryann Juden left his job as city manager in mid-May. Yet North Las Vegas has still paid him nearly $1 million this year. Mr. Juden collected a severance of nearly $675,000 along with a $97,000 check for unused sick pay and vacation time. Ah, the perks of public-sector work.

Mr. Juden has since also received $85,500 in consulting fees from the city. Two weeks before he left city employment, the City Council approved a three-year, six-figure contract with a company called Edge Strategies, which — wait for it — was incorporated in January by Mr. Juden’s wife. The deal calls for the firm to receive $15,000 a month, plus expenses not to exceed $30,000 a year, to provide “management, public affairs, policy analysis and advisory services.”

North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown this month defended the contract, arguing Mr. Juden was an integral part of the city’s turnaround from near bankruptcy to firm financial footing. “I don’t want to lose that momentum that we have now,” she told the Review-Journal’s Mary Hynes. Mayor Pro Tem Scott Black told the paper that Mr. Juden “had a great track record, and so we had the opportunity to hold on to a percentage of his bandwidth to help us continue the momentum in our city.”

Yet the mayor and the mayor pro tem weren’t so eager to publicize the arrangement back in May. In fact, they slid the deal through on the sly. The Juden contract was buried in the City Council’s “consent agenda,” which typically includes a number of rudimentary items approved as a package without discussion in a single vote. The agenda item didn’t mention Mr. Juden.

City Councilman Richard Cherchio told Ms. Hynes that he wasn’t even aware Mr. Juden was involved when he voted on the matter in May. “It should have been done much more transparently than it was,” he said.

The fact that city officials attempted to keep the contract out of the spotlight speaks volumes about the rancid stench wafting from this cozy deal. Ms. Goynes-Brown dug the hole even deeper by telling Ms. Hynes that North Las Vegas has “very, very savvy residents” who would know how to protest if they had concerns about the contract. But not when she and others contemptuously went to great lengths to ensure those residents remained clueless.

Mr. Juden may indeed be a valuable asset. Yet it’s precisely this type of backroom dealing that drives taxpayer cynicism about public officials. The subterfuge is a stain on North Las Vegas leaders and indicates the city still has plenty of growing up to do.