Friday, Aug. 19, 2005 | 9:58 a.m.
The state Real Estate Division is moving up what officials initially said could be a yearlong wait to determine whether real estate appraiser Tim Morse should be punished for his role in controversial sales of public land.
The initial, long timeline, reported last week after the Clark County Commission asked the division to investigate Morse's role in two separate transactions, apparently came as a surprise to Gov. Kenny Guinn.
Guinn dispatched general counsel Keith Monroe to lean on the division to finish sooner, Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin said.
"We expected them to move on it in a reasonable amount of time," he said. "What was set forth earlier was not reasonable."
No new deadline had been set Thursday afternoon for a final conclusion about Morse's role in the land deals, Sydney Wickliffe, director of the state Department of Business and Industry, said.
Wickliffe, whose department includes the Real Estate Division, said she expected to meet this afternoon with division administrator Gail Anderson to set a timetable for the complaint.
"This one will be dealt with with all deliberate speed," Wickliffe said. "... You never want to ignore it when your boss calls. It's not going to sit on the northwest corner of someone's desk."
Still, she said, it was unclear when the state could launch its investigation into Morse.
Wickliffe said that by Thursday afternoon she had yet to receive the 77-page report detailing what independent auditing firm Marshall Stevens and county Manager Thom Reilly said were questionable transactions between McCarran International Airport officials and land broker Scott Gragson, who hired Morse in 2002.
Commissioners voted last month to bar Morse from doing any additional work for the county until the state's investigation is complete. Chairman Rory Reid last week signed a two-page letter urging state officials to look into the land deals.
State procedure dictates that appraisal officers will review the county's complaint before deciding whether to hire consultants with expertise in commercial appraisals to conduct a formal investigation. Once that investigation is complete, the matter will come before the five-member appraisal commission, which will decide whether to discipline Morse, Wickliffe said.
Past decisions have taken the commission numerous meetings spread out over several months to reach, she said.
"It's a complicated series of transactions, and that kind of stuff doesn't get done in a flash in two weeks' time," Wickliffe said. "It just doesn't lend itself to an instant solution."
State appraisal officer Brenda Kindred-Kipling, saying a backlog of unfinished cases could keep them from getting to the Clark County Commission's request sooner, said last week that a possible investigation and subsequent appraisal commission decision could be up to a year away.
That deadline was longer than Guinn was willing to wait, Bortolin said.
"I don't think the governor's office would've made the call if we weren't surprised," he said.
Meanwhile county audit director Jerry Carroll, who said last week that he was also surprised by the 12-month delay, said he had heard of the expedited schedule but was out of his office most of the day Thursday and did not know if anyone from Guinn's office had called him directly.
"I think it's a great idea" to speed the complaint, he said. "I want to thank the governor if it's true."
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