Thursday, Dec. 18, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.
University regents responsible for closed meetings that removed the Community College of Southern Nevada president and his adviser remain deeply divided over their actions a week after a move to rescind the firings failed.
On "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" Wednesday, Regents Bret Whipple and Howard Rosenberg, who voted on opposite sides of the issue defended their votes on the removal of CCSN President Ron Remington and his adviser and lobbyist John Cummings.
The program airs on Las Vegas ONE, Cox Cable channels 1 and 19.
The two regents stood by their previous votes -- Whipple's to oust the duo and Rosenberg's to keep them -- but Rosenberg expressed outrage at himself and the rest of the Board of Regents for not allowing Remington and others accused of wrongdoing to defend themselves.
He added that regents should have been given time to read the report. The 1,000-page report was instead partially read to the regents, in a way that Rosenberg said favored the removals.
"It is without doubt, one of the most jumbled up, inconclusive pieces of circumstantial garbage that I have ever in my life read," Rosenberg said of the report. "I am furious with it. And I am furious with us not being able to get through what I consider to be a proper process and do it properly by listening to someone who has worked for us for 30 years. We didn't give him the chance to talk to us, and that's wrong."
Rosenberg said the report did not support firing Remington, who had just been given a "glowing recommendation" by the Board of Regents.
"There wasn't enough there for me to take and throw a human life away, and that is essentially what we did," Rosenberg said.
Whipple disagreed, telling Ralston that the 17 hours the board spent going over the report was more than sufficient. Whipple said he even came in a couple of hours early to read Remington's transcript from his interview with the private investigator, Jeffrey Cohen, who prepared the report.
Whipple told Ralston that, after reading the transcript and hearing the report, he thought speaking with Remington in person "wouldn't have changed my opinion."
"The reason I voted the way I did was that I truly believed we needed a change in leadership," Whipple said.
"(Remington) answered in those transcripts the same way he answered on this program," Whipple said. "How many times can he say the same thing -- 'I don't know' or 'I didn't know that.' That to me, again, there was a problem in regard to not what he did know but what he didn't know."
Whipple told Ralston there was evidence in the report that Remington or Cummings violated policies regarding community college admission, hiring and capital lists, and that there was a number of facts and circumstances surroundings Cummings' rise to power that concerned him.
He said the primary issue, however, was whether either administrator wrongfully bypassed the Board of Regents in their attempts to make the community college a four-year university through the Legislature.
Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, a CCSN spokeswoman, narrowly avoided being fired for her involvement in the bill. Whipple said his main issue was that she was doing legislative work while being paid by the community college.
Whipple said that Topazia "Briget" Jones kept her job because she was merely "a pawn between Wendell Williams and John Cummings" and was doing what she was told.
Rosenberg said he questioned whether the regents had a right to even vote on Jones, but that he tended to believe Remington, a "30-year-employee," over "one that has been there for a month and a half."
Attorney General Brian Sandoval said he had made it a priority to address the five open-meeting law complaints filed against the Board of Regents, three of which have the potential of overturning the removal of Remington and Cummings.
Remington and Cummings were arguing for transcripts from the closed meeting, as ordered by Distrct Court Judge Jackie Glass. University system attorneys had refused to turn over the transcripts pending a clarification from Glass on whether they must turn over verbatim transcripts or minutes of the 17-hour meeting.
Regent Chairman Stavros Anthony ordered Wednesday that a transcript be made and given to anyone who was discussed during the meeting.
"Give them a verbatim transcript, give them the recording, give them everything they ask for," Rosenberg said. "They are entitled it."
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