Editorial: Bailout or just bail?

Monday, July 24, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

News just doesn't seem to improve for UNLV's troubled Institute for Security Studies, which has been notified that some of its federal funding may be in peril.

According to a story by the Las Vegas Sun on Friday, the U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration has informed the university that the agency has the authority to withhold $5 million in unused funding from the security institute if the program doesn't make good on the promises it made in its original 2004 grant and also explain why it hasn't met those objectives.

The warning, which was issued in writing, is the latest in a series of criticisms the institute has received since the Sun first reported last month on the institute's failure to adhere to its objectives and goals.

The 3-year-old institute, which has received nearly $9 million in public money, hasn't produced its intended results. Its master's program remains on hold, and it hasn't produced a single advancement in counterterrorism technology. Three of the institute's main objectives have been dropped completely, including the development of a laboratory for studying organisms that can be used in weapons of mass destruction.

Investigations are under way by UNLV, the Board of Regents and the Nuclear Security Administration, which sent the letter to the UNLV Research Foundation that said the agency was concerned about being kept in the dark about the institute's work.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last month approved $1.5 million in additional funding contingent on the institute delivering its promised academic program. But just a day later, the Sun reports, the institute applied for half of $5 million in federal money already set aside for it, claiming it had reorganized and would focus on three areas - none of which had anything to do with creating an academic program.

It sounds like a classic bait-and-switch. The Nuclear Security Administration should hold off on granting any more money to this organization until the ongoing investigations are finished, and everyone knows exactly what taxpayers are - or aren't - getting for their money.