First lady doesn’t waver on Sierra Nevada story

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

First lady Dawn Gibbons said Monday she was paid $2,500 plus expenses per month for nearly a year to do consulting work for Sierra Nevada Corp. under an oral, not written, contract.

In an interview following a meeting with the Sun's editorial board on a campaign to tackle the state's methamphetamine abuse problem, Mrs. Gibbons said she did not know exactly how much she received overall from Sierra Nevada, a Reno-area defense contractor.

However, attorneys for her husband, Gov. Jim Gibbons, confirmed a March 30 report in The Wall Street Journal that said she got at least $35,000 from the company.

Her consulting payments overlapped her husband's efforts in Congress to secure federal defense contracts for Sierra Nevada. Mrs. Gibbons has previously indicated through lawyers that she had no knowledge of her husband's dealings with the company.

Mrs. Gibbons said under the oral arrangement she began helping Sierra Nevada promote an emergency hand-held communications device in November 2003. She conducted news conferences and did other public relations work for the company.

"They wanted to do a pilot project in Nevada," she said. "They thought it would turn into something bigger. They said we'll pay you $2,500 a month and we'll see how it goes."

While Mrs. Gibbons was working for Sierra Nevada, her husband, then a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was seeking $4 million in federal funding for a special helicopter landing system that the company was developing for the military.

As the months progressed, she said Monday, it became clear that Sierra Nevada's communications project "wasn't going anywhere," and 11 months later, in October 2004, she ended her business relationship with the company.

Mrs. Gibbons said she first met Sierra Nevada owners Fatih and Eren Ozmen a decade earlier when she sought them out after learning that they had established a child-care facility for their employees at the company's Sparks headquarters.

A friendship developed, she said.

"We saw them often," said Mrs. Gibbons, noting that the Ozmens live in the Assembly district that both she and her husband once represented.

The first lady said she has turned over to her husband's attorneys airline receipts for a 2000 vacation to Turkey that they took with the Ozmens.

She said she and her husband paid $1,412.80 per ticket for them and one of the governor's sons from a previous marriage.

Mrs. Gibbons said she couldn't recall where the couple stayed in Turkey, but she said they weren't always with the Ozmens.

"We went on our own a lot, and they went on their own," she said.

Mrs. Gibbons said it has been difficult over the past few months having to deal with an FBI investigation of her husband's ties to another Northern Nevada defense contractor, eTreppid Technologies.

But she said the couple are persevering.

"They have to do their job, and we'll cooperate and do whatever we need to do," she said.