Budget shocks may not be the end

By David McGrath Schwartz (contact)

Sunday, Dec. 16, 2007 | 1:16 a.m.

Budget cut, take four, and heads are shaking. Has Gov. Jim Gibbons figured it out yet?

To be sure, his latest strategy to cut the state's distressed budget produced some sighs of relief Friday from the university system and mental health advocates. Now they'll have to cut their budgets by only 4.5 percent, not the 8 percent they had braced for.

But what about his promises to spare elementary and secondary education, prisons and public safety?

He had told them they were exempt from his red pen. Exempt, as in escape the hatchet, count your blessings, take a deep breath.

That protective shield was yanked from them Friday as Gibbons came up with a fourth way to reconcile the budget. This is a work in progress, his staff said.

"He has broken a promise to hold us harmless," said Lynn Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley said, "I'm appalled that K-12 received such a large cut, when everyone thought it would not be cut."

The latest jarring turn in the budget path reflects a rookie governor and staff dealing with its first budget crisis, say bureaucrats and politicians observing him.

"This is a governor who has the least budget experience of anyone in recent memory," said one Republican source. "He's learning as he goes."

This, his fourth budget plan, continued to elicit protests about lack of transparency, communication and long-term planning from the administration.

Gibbons' senior staff dismissed the idea that the governor was backtracking from an earlier commitment to spare primary and secondary education, prisons and public safety. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one senior aide pointed to tax revenue that continued to come in below projections. Earlier statements that certain departments were exempt, the official said, were intended to be genuine but had to be cast aside because of still-dropping revenue. It's an evolving process, he said.

Evolving process or not, administrators and legislators have now been forced to scramble.

Howard Skolnik, director of the Corrections Department, is now looking at cutting $24 million over the biennium, and says he's still working on how to pull it off.

If there was frustration over the new cuts, there also was consternation over how Gibbons set the stage.

Gibbons said in his news conference Friday that school superintendents had been given advance notice.

A senior Clark County district administrator, who asked not to be identified, scoffed at the claim.

There was a phone call from the governor's office early Fridy afternoon followed by an e-mail about 30 minutes later, the administrator said.

"Is that what he means by 'advance' warning?"

Buckley, the state's top Democrat, met with Gibbons on Thursday. She said she was not told that K-12 would be cut, or that the announcement would come Friday.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell, D-Carson City, said the loss of the empowerment schools program is particularly grating, given that it was one of the governor's own priorities. In fact, the empowerment schools initiative took center stage in the education portion of the governor's inaugural address.

"The Assembly and the Senate worked long, long hours to come up with something that satisfied both houses," said Parnell, chairwoman of the Legislative Committee on Education. "Now we're just going to say 'forget it'?"

The problem, Parnell said, "is the executive branch isn't working with the legislative branch, which is the body that appropriated the funds, to figure out how we can best get through the economic downturn without hurting our children, our mentally ill or our seniors."

Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said the announced cuts "make you understand why people use the initiative process. They have to take matters into their own hands when the people in control are not being responsive to the public's needs."

This is the fourth version of Gibbons's plan to deal with tax revenue that is sharply under projections. (No. 1, Asking for 5 percent cuts, exempting K-12, public safety and corrections; No. 2, also exempting juvenile justice and child welfare; No. 3, Asking the targeted departments to prepare 8 percent cuts.)

"This has been like a roller-coaster ride," Buckley said. "It's never easy to cut budgets. It's a hard thing for any governor to do. But it's better to do it without the roller coaster."

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been calling for across-the-board cuts, from the beginning, and has declared a fiscal emergency to fast-track those cuts.

Gibbons could have done the same, asking everyone to share a more modest burden. That's what other Nevada governors had done in the past.

Instead, Gibbons chose to exempt programs that he thought were government priorities. In the short term, it might have been the politically smart move. In the past few months, teachers and the school districts, advocates for prison reform and those supporting public safety had not been complaining about the cuts.

But now, not only is the governor cutting those departments, but they complain they were blindsided, or worse yet, that he broke his word.

The announcement on Friday afternoon (a common time for politicians to drop unpopular news) was not entirely lambasted.

Carlos Brandenburg, director of the state Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, called the announcement by the governor great news. He said the division could survive the 4.5 percent cut without damaging important mental health programs.

Many in the University System also expressed relief.

University Chancellor Jim Rogers, who has been critical of the governor, offered a caveat, though:

"Is this 4.5 going to be 4.5 or are we going to find in two months that there's another shortfall, and we're going to have to cut 6.5?" he asked.

Sun reporters Cy Ryan, Emily Richmond and Charlotte Hsu contributed to this report.