Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Jon Ralston on the governor-elect’s big transition team and whether his ascension marks end of Guinn Era

Let's begin by giving Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons the benefit of the doubt. This will not take long.

Perhaps there is a fine reason why the incoming governor needs almost 200 people on a transition team, a typically small number of folks who create a bridge from one administration to another.

I suppose it could be argued that because the bridge between Jim Gibbons and Kenny Guinn was destroyed in The Great Tax Conflagration of 2003, it might take 200 people to rebuild it. But although it is clear - including in a two-part interview that is airing this week on "Face to Face" - that Guinn never forgave Gibbons for his politically expedient anti-tax comments in 2003, there must be more to it than that.

But what?

The Gibbonsites insist their man simply is being inclusive by naming this welter of insiders, legislators, former legislators, incoming politicians, former politicians and, of course, many lobbyists with interests before the 2007 Legislature.

And there is no argument that many of these people have great insight into the issues of the moment, that some are singularly qualified to impart useful information to Gibbons. "The bottom line is that he's listening - to some of the best experts on many facets of state government," the governor-elect's spokesman, Brent Boynton, said.

The benefit of the doubt stops here. And the questions begin:

Listening to what? Boynton says the team "will not produce policy" and "will not make formal recommendations." So what will they do?

Here are some possibilities:

A. Look important to their friends and get ceremonial "transition team" badges

B. Gain access for their agendas and clients

C. Help explain state government - in an unbiased way - to a governor-elect who talked about very little and talked very little at all during Campaign '06

D. Make the governor-elect seem as if he is doing a lot when he is not doing much

Take your pick. But consider that along with respected industry leaders, the transition team is stuffed with backbencher legislators - mostly Republicans - and some others who obviously were put on the list for campaign donation payback and maximum suck-up value. That is, many on this bulging team can have no possible function except to feel close to the governor or to make the governor-elect feel close to them.

I understand that symbolism is important in politics. So the image of a governor who is reaching out to all constituencies - Democrats, Republicans, rurals, North and South, unions, management, lobbyists and more lobbyists - is important.

But as much as this transition team is the laughingstock of the political community - even among some of those who are on it who could not say no when the governor-elect called - the real, serious danger is what this could represent.

And that is paralysis.

It's one thing to listen to many viewpoints. It's quite another to have whatever ideology you might have reduced to incoherence by all the static.

Even though he may have confused his transition team invitations with the embossed cards for the Inaugural Ball, Gibbons' much more frightening confusion is what does he do once he has to govern starting in 2007?

That is, can he answer the question that we were left simply to ponder during his campaign: What does he really believe in?

No new taxes? That's deep.

And that's all we have.

The seminal question for the new governor to answer - and perhaps we will get a hint Jan. 22 during his State of the State - is whether he believes the Guinn Era should continue or be brought to a resounding end. The latter surely is what a lot of conservatives hope he will choose, without much regard to what the facts are.

It was that lack of specifics and knowledge that allowed Gibbons to criticize the 2003 tax increase and allowed opponents of the billion-dollar baby to demagogue and spin their way into the public's hearts. But no one ever presented a list of budget cuts - including any of the so-called Mean/Fearless 15 assemblymen who blocked the increase for a time.

So will Gibbons tell us where the Guinn budget is fat? And if he is really a true-blue conservative, why doesn't he just roll back the Guinn tax increase?

Gibbons, though, already has said he will only leave "small fingerprints" on Guinn's proposed budget. And that is what the left and the right should fear the most: The governor-elect has a big transition team but only small ideas of what to do as governor.

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