Why Isn't This a Big Deal?

In case you haven't noticed, this is an election year. So it's incredibly easy to miss stories that aren't on the campaigns' radar and get dropped quickly by political reporters looking for "the next big story". It looks like that happened to this troubling story on personnel problems at Clark County HQ.

Long story short, an assistant parks director was supposedly fired in 2008 over a botched plan to force Las Vegas Metro police to handle security problems at most county parks over Memorial Day Weekend. However, this former assistant parks director later claimed that this was actually his supervisor's plan. And not only did the supervisor make him the "fall guy", but also had him fired because he refused to discriminate against a gay manager who made the supervisor feel "uncomfortable".

And now, this former county worker is on track to receive a $499,000 settlement from Clark County over his wrongful termination law suit. So apparently, this case is far from "frivolous".

Seriously, this case disturbs me in so many ways. First off, why was the county parks director, Leonard Cash, allowed to inject his personal religious beliefs into county business and bully other county workers? Last I checked, this is the 21st century and we are supposed to operate on separation of church and state. Well, at least more Nevadans are finally realizing why we needed a fully inclusive ENDA.

And that's the other problem here. For all the progress we've made, we still have much further to go before LGBTQ Nevadans can finally expect equal protection under the law. Remember, this happened in 2008. It was not all the long ago. Why has it taken this long for this case to approach a fair resolution? And has the county taken the appropriate steps to ensure that LGBTQ workers are no longer harassed in county government?

And finally, why can't the county get its act together? Both Clark County and the City of Las Vegas took a big hit in their respective reputations when the G-Sting scandal first broke. Yet ever since then, both local governments have struggled to regain their PR footing. This looks to be yet another black eye for Clark County that needs treatment.

Again, this is an election year, so the usual campaign pomp and circumstance are expected to suck all the oxygen out of the press rooms. But then again, we do have County Commission elections this year. Will someone finally step up and say something about this?