Editorial: Advice from the north

Friday, Jan. 12, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.

I n his inaugural address this month, Gov. Jim Gibbons declared his goal to create "one Nevada."

Here is one way how "one Nevada" is playing out - of the 16 state department heads in the governor's Cabinet, only one is from Southern Nevada.

Because state government is based in Northern Nevada, it is not a surprise that many department heads who come up through the ranks live in Carson City or Reno, but given that 71 percent of the state's population lives in Clark County, some 400 miles from Carson City, we would think there would be considerably more members from Southern Nevada.

"He's (Gibbons is) looking for qualifications, not region," Gibbons' spokesman Brent Boynton told the Las Vegas Sun's Carson City bureau chief Cy Ryan. Boynton added that geography is "not a big factor."

That was painfully obvious to see with one of Gibbons' newest Cabinet members, Daniel Stockwell, a classmate of the governor's at Sparks High School. Stockwell lives in Northern California.

In his inaugural address Jan. 2, Gibbons said, "We must not allow the interest of one part of the state to override the concerns of another." He added that the "test of leadership is to find common ground."

That is going to be difficult. The issues facing Clark County and its growth are on a scale unimaginable in Carson City - according to the state demographer's office, there are more people living within in the city limits of Las Vegas than there are in Carson City and the four surrounding counties, including Washoe, combined.

"One Nevada" sounds nice, but we don't know how it will be created when the governor and the people surrounding him in the cozy confines of Carson City can't identify with the needs of Southern Nevada.