If you build it, they will come?

Clark County has botched the oversight of remodeling projects at Harrah's Entertainment properties badly enough already. Any more screwups -- or the appearance of any more screwups -- would only solidify the public perception that those nice buildings on Grand Central Parkway are satellite offices for Gaming Inc.

That's why it was encouraging when County Manager Virginia Valentine removed building inspector Rick Maddox from the investigation on Wednesday. It was Mr. Maddox, a county building division employee since 1995, who conducted what amounted to a drive-by inquiry in February that cleared the Rio of any wrongdoing despite the fact that the hotel completed major room renovations without permits or safety inspections.

Currently, about 140 rooms covering two floors of the hotel's original Ipanema tower have been closed to guests as a result of a joint Harrah's-Clark County investigation into the remodeling work. Those closures were ordered by the county on Oct. 5, after the Review-Journal reported the government's refusal to act on a formal complaint filed by an electrician who worked on the Rio remodeling.

That complaint, submitted in August 2006, was ignored for about six months before Mr. Maddox conducted his superficial investigation.

Mr. Maddox, who has a vested interest in saving his own bacon at this point in the controversy, couldn't possibly be expected to make objective contributions to the county's investigation.

Of course, the larger question of whether Clark County government is capable of identifying and correcting its own failures is very much unanswered. How on earth could an agency charged with ensuring this county's tens of thousands of hotel rooms are safe for visitors completely abdicate its responsibilities? When this city's recent history includes two deadly hotel fires that could have been prevented with basic building measures?

While we applaud Ms. Valentine's move, we'd still feel better if the whole thing were turned over to Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

This whole mess can be attributed to incompetence and/or malfeasance -- two things Clark County government is all too familiar with.