Editorial: Not so fast, Governor

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

As a candidate running for Nevada treasurer, Kate Marshall posed an interesting question about the office's unclaimed property division during an Oct. 12 interview with Las Vegas Sun's Editorial Board. "Are people getting their assets returned to them?" she said.

Marshall said one of her priorities as treasurer would be to make the division's Web site more user-friendly, to rid it of the technical barriers that, intentionally or not, confound people trying to track down their missing valuables.

After she was elected, Marshall reiterated her position to Sun reporter Michael J. Mishak. "My immediate concern is getting that money back to the people it belongs to," she said.

We recalled her statements Monday while listening to Gov. Jim Gibbons deliver his State of the State address. In talking about Nevada's Millennium Scholarship, Gibbons said, "I am directing an additional $5.6 million from unclaimed property receipts to shore up the scholarship fund and secure it for Nevada students far into the future."

Later in his speech, Gibbons said, "I have included in the executive budget $10 million in unclaimed property receipts to create a dynamic new economic development program ..."

The scholarship fund for graduates of Nevada high schools, started early in former Gov. Kenny Guinn's first term with money from the national tobacco settlement, is already being augmented with millions each year from unclaimed property receipts.

Last month Mishak wrote about the state's current procedures for attempting to locate owners of unclaimed property and confirmed that they were in need of improvement. He found that revenue from unclaimed property has risen steadily in the past four years while the percentage of funds being returned to their rightful owners has remained the same, or gotten smaller.

In our view, Marshall should be given a chance to fully institute reforms in the procedures for locating the owners of the unclaimed property before the state goes ahead and commits more money to its budget from this unreliable source.