A learning curve for Gov. Gibbons

What a difference 16 months makes. Last January, when he first came into office, Gov. Jim Gibbons was largely panned for what many saw as a leadership style that attempted to import Republican/D.C. politics into the Silver State, scandals and all.

To refresh, first, the Governor pulled-out the GOP all-purpose canard of national security to justify his midnight swearing in. Of course, the real reason that Gibbons maneuvered to take office prior to the official inauguration had nothing to do with protecting the homeland, but rather was engineered to stave off a last minute appointment by out-going Gov. Kenny Guinn to the state's powerful Gaming Control Board.

Next, the Governor cloaked many of his early actions in Cheney-esque secrecy. For instance, Gibbons and his staff dodged repeated inquiries about his shaking hands at his second inauguration. Similarly, press inquiries about the manner in which the state's biennium budget was being prepared were routinely ignored.

This was followed by a string of "Heck of a Job Brownie" type hack appointments. There was the Governor's decision to place Nye County Commissioner and Yucca Mountain proponent Joni Eastley on the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission. Then there was the selection of the utterly unqualified Joe Enge, a former history teacher turned conservative education consultant, to the Governor's Office of Energy. And who could forget the Governor's choice of Joe Waltuch, who previously lobbied for the nation's second-largest subprime lender, New Century Financial Corporation (now bankrupt and under federal investigation), to serve as commissioner of the Nevada Mortgage Lending Division.

The Governor also proved not to be immune to Bush style crazy, pie in the-sky policy proposals. Just as the President pledged that the United States should be focusing its efforts on launching manned space missions to Mars, Gibbons proposed that Nevada should invest in a liquefied coal plant to solve its energy needs even though the state has no coal deposits. In a similar vein, the Governor floated the idea of selling water rights under the state's highways to pay for infrastructure needs; a sound idea unless one bothered to check and see if the state actually owned the rights.

Mean while, the lack of substantive accomplishments did not stop the Governor's Office from regularly cranking out "Mission Accomplished" style press releases heralding Gibbons' latest coups. First, there were the much trumpeted transition teams. Then the state was promised a bold new budget process that in the end looked remarkably like the old budget process. Next, there was the touting of empowerment schools as the magic bullet that would cure the state's education ills even though no one in the Governor's Office, including the Governor himself, had any idea what the program entailed. Most recently, the Governor's Office peddled yet another bold new initiative. This time the goal was streamlining the state's bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, no concrete proposals have been unveiled let alone actual changes to the manner in which the state is administered.

The reincarnation of the Bush White House (sans the message discipline and the ruthless efficiency in rotting the government to its core, but hey that is what second terms are for) in Carson City appeared to be complete last winter with the Governor's claims of unitary executive powers to address the state's budget shortfall. Without conferring with other stakeholders, most notably, the Legislature, Gibbons declared that he would cut the budgets of most state agencies by eight percent (exempting primary education, public safety, and prisons). Ultimately, the Governor settled on four and half percent across the board cuts.

Suddenly, however, it appears that the Governor has changed course ever so slightly. Perhaps unlike his co-partisan in the White House, Gibbons may have finally realized that his prior course of action, while scoring points with his GOP base and insuring no primary challenge in 2010, was pushing the state's swing voters towards the Democrats and imperiling his party's control of the state Senate.

At any rate, Gibbons' decision to actually meet with leaders from the Legislature and seek consensus about how to address the state's ever increasing budget woes is a significant step that suggests actual on the job learning. While a more adroit politician would have realized from the outset that gaining the support of both parties' legislative leaders might be a useful buffer against the inevitable backlash that results when one takes the ax to the budget, the point is that it only took the kid from Sparks two rounds of budget cuts to figure this out.

Moreover, the combination of holding firm to his no new tax pledges and cutting the budget so as to eliminate nearly the entire spending increase from the prior biennium insures that Gibbons will be canonized by the state's anti-tax, starve the beast crowd. In the mean time, of course, the other 70 percent of Nevadans who expect the state government to play some role in addressing the state's education, healthcare, water, infrastructure, foreclosure, social services, you name it problems are s.o.l.

In light of the situation, I asked Dina Titus what she would have done if she was sitting in the Governor's Office. She said that she would have sought consensus much earlier in the process and then would go the Legislature seeking a broad based business tax. Given Gibbons' position on taxes, her tax proposal is a non-starter. And if the gamers are able to keep the teacher's initiative to raise the gaming tax off the ballot and the state's economy keeps tanking, by the end of his term Gov. Gibbons will have returned the state government back to where it was in roughly 2002 despite an increase in 300,000 residents. You remember 2002. That was back when George W. Bush was riding high and the GOP dominated the political landscape.