For Moore, it’s never easy

Jennifer Knight

Friday, April 6, 2001 | 5 a.m.

If a warning label adorned the desk of Richard Moore, it would read: Hang on, the ride may get bumpy, but keep up or get left behind.

Those who have worked with Moore, founding president of Nevada State College at Henderson, describe him as a hard-driving, mercurial man, possessed with a will to make his vision happen.

His latest vision is to bring the first state college to Nevada -- a difficult feat in a line of many that have punctuated Moore's often controversial 35-year career. This is his swan song.

"It is an ending chapter, certainly," Moore, 68, said.

The state college has heavy backing, including Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson; Gov. Kenny Guinn and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.

Despite that kind of leverage, Moore is under pressure to pull off his biggest hat trick yet.

His greatest challenges lie before him: raising enough private money to match state dollars, persuading legislators to approve the project despite proposed budget cuts and overcoming two investigations that have cast a shadow over him.

So far the foundation set up for the college has raised about $750,000 in cash and in-kind contributions. Basic Management Inc. -- Henderson's industrial plants -- and its subsidiaries have been the principal donors, Moore said.

While Moore admits that's nowhere near the $10 million goal to match state money, he is hoping that donations will flow once the Legislature approves the project.

"Appropriately, there has been a debate as to whether there needs to be a state college, and donors don't give to things that are debated, they give to things that are assured," Moore said.

That seems to leave the college in a "Catch-22." One of the key legislative players, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, wants to see more money raised before he supports state funding.

"I have not made a firm commitment on this," Raggio said. "I have to be concerned with the feasibility. If those kinds of commitments have not matured, it would be difficult to approve."

Raggio has warned people of an impending fiscal shortage, which could jeopardize the state college and other projects.

"There might be cuts all over the place," said Carole Vilardo, president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit group that watches state spending. "It's highly possible that the college winds up being one of them."

So far the foundation is keeping the fledgling college afloat until it can get new funding from the Legislature, said Orlando Sandoval, the college's interim vice president for planning and administration.

Stormy days

With less than two weeks before he makes his pitch to the Legislature, Moore finds himself in the eye of a storm.

During the past year Moore has faced questions after a negative audit of his administration at the Community College of Southern Nevada. That led to an attorney general's investigation, which stirred more controversy.

Now he is dealing with a last-minute land switch caused when the city of Henderson withdrew a donation because there were problems with cleanup of adjacent parcels.

"It's a pressure cooker," Moore says of the year's events. "But meanwhile I am trying to do something good for the state of Nevada."

The recently released attorney general's report alleges Sandoval violated the state's anti-nepotism rules by raising his father-in-law's pay at CCSN.

"It appears by what they found that Mr. Sandoval may have signed some forms that he should not have signed," Moore said.

But Moore defended his longtime colleague, saying Sandoval neither hired nor directly supervised his father-in-law. He says the attorney general's office does not have all of the information.

The report also uncovered questionable tactics in other areas that skirted state regulations.

CCSN officials didn't follow exact procedures on things such as contract bids, incentive bonuses or counting full-time enrollment, but they didn't break any laws either.

It's all par for the course, according to CCSN's former vice president of academic affairs, who once said Moore came to Nevada because of the freedom it offered him.

"When Richard came here, he thought he had died and gone to heaven, because there were no rules," said Robert Silverman, who was interim president of the community college after Moore left.

Moore sees it differently.

"In Nevada, our issue is not what we cannot do, it's what we can do."

And, for the record, Silverman thought he had "died and gone to heaven, too," he said.

Aptly enough, Moore began his career in academic administration as a dean of a two-year startup college in Moorpark, Calif. He became the president of nearby Santa Monica College, where he stayed for 20 years. In that time enrollment jumped from 12,000 students to more than 22,000.

Along the way he made friends, many of whom he brought to CCSN. But because of his unique and sometimes bombastic managerial style, he was viewed as an iconoclast.

And he made enemies.

"There were administrators who couldn't wait to put the knife into his back and get other people in as president," said Charlie Donaldson, who served as Santa Monica College's president of academic senate under Moore. "He was too slippery for them all."

Moore dares his detractors to look at what he's left behind at both institutions.

At Santa Monica, he pioneered the idea of free flow, so that students could attend any community college, not just the one in their district, said Herb Roney, a vice president who worked under Moore for years while he was at Santa Monica College.

At CCSN, he raised the college-going rate to record amounts and tripled the number of minorities attending.

His efforts at CCSN were met with great resistance, Moore said.

"I started with 26 managers, and 20 of them either left or I removed them because they weren't on board," Moore said. "They thought (increasing enrollment) would upset other institutions. Change makes people uncomfortable."

Behind the man

To view Moore in black-and-white terms is to miss all of the shades of gray in between.

"He's a perfectionist. He wants things to go well," said Roney.

"Richard can be moody, but I think a person who seeks success can be moody, if he sees things aren't turning out the way he envisioned things to be."

To those who say he is moody, Moore makes no excuses. To those who say he is dishonest, Moore replies that his problem is being too honest.

There is more to the man than is apparent. He has battled and overcome cancer.

"I faced death at 55. It changed me," he said. "But then I got out of bed and said, 'This is all it is?' Then I went to work."

Moore once toured his campus in Santa Monica in a wheelchair all day. The next day, workers were out breaking up concrete and putting in ramps to fix the areas he could not access, Donaldson said.

Even on vacation, he works. Once, while staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, three things struck him: the concierge, the smell of coffee and the presence of flowers in the lobby.

Moore came back to CCSN, hired a concierge to greet people, put a coffee shop next to the lobby and had orchids delivered.

What drives him is a need to not leave the world the way he found it, a motivation that came from his mother, he says.

Each Sunday, he recalls, his mother made him clear the plates after the congregation ate at their Presbyterian church. She would tell him, "Clean the dishes and then hide. You don't need to take credit for good work."

With experience in education, a master's of business administration and a doctoral degree in economics, Moore is a hybrid of the academic world and the take-no-prisoners business world.

That makes him a desirable administrator because of his ability to navigate his way through the political arena, a skill many hope will pay off this legislative session.

So when the political winds started blowing in the direction of building a new state college, the Board of Regents turned to Moore to be its rainmaker.

Moore's play for legislative approval is a critical one.

The idea for a state college failed to make the Public Works Board's list of recommendations and is fraught with other obstacles, such as the need for private funding and the lack of a final site.

In January good news came when Guinn added the college to his budget.

"Once it got into the governor's budget, that was a tremendous coup for Richard (Moore) because at that point it's pretty much a done deal," Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas and a UNLV professor, said.

Regents hope the charisma and experience that have kept Moore on top for 35 years will win legislators over.

"Whatever you may think of him, he knows how to get things done," Regent Howard Rosenberg said.

Perkins is a true believer in the project -- not just because it is good for Henderson, but because he believes it is cost-effective. A study commissioned by the 1999 Legislature found a four-year college could educate students for $7,051 in 2007, versus $10,839 at UNLV.

"Rather than putting them in a Cadillac, we're going to put them in a Chevy," he said. "It's going to cost less to get there, but they're going to get there."

The biggest opponents have come from UNLV, Perkins said. After expressing initial skepticism about the four-year college, though, Harter has publicly supported the plan.

"If you're the only game in town and you have no competition, what is there continually pushing you?" Perkins said.

Brushing off the list of negatives piling up on him, Moore is staying on target with the single-mindedness that he is known for.

"Nevada can't afford not to build a state college," he said, adding that the project will save the state $2.5 million the first year because of the cheaper cost.

For Moore personally, winning approval for the state college is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will complete a circle.

"It was fun to start my career by beginning a college, and at 68 the thought of starting a four-year college seems appropriate. It's sort of like bookends."

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