Side jobs come under scrutiny

Friday, March 30, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

The attorney for the Nevada System of Higher Education questions whether college employees should be allowed to moonlight for college-hired contractors, because of potential conflicts of interest.

The issue surfaced during a Sun investigation into complaints about management in the facilities, operations and maintenance department at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

Orlando Sandoval, a former vice president of planning of the college and now a consultant working for an architectural firm on the Cheyenne campus, hired college employees to work on jobs contracted out by the college, officials say.

One of those employees, Henderson facility supervisor Mario Balderas, said he and another employee took a week of vacation to work for Sandoval, painting part of the college's science building. He said Sandoval paid him $2,000.

Employees are allowed to do side work on their own time, system lawyer Bart Patterson said. But working after hours for a contractor to do work on the campus raises concerns about conflict of interest because that college employee might also supervise or review that contractor's work on campus.

He did not know whether any conflict might have existed in Balderas' case.

Nevada Administrative Code prohibits state employees from engaging in employment or other activity that is inconsistent, incompatible or in conflict with their duties as employees or with the duties of the college. That includes accepting employment or other favors that could unduly influence decisions made for the college.

The code allows state entities to define what those conflicts might be, but CCSN has not done so, Patterson said. The issue has not come up on other campuses.

"It's an unusual situation," he said. "Either such opportunities don't arise much or most people would never consider it." He has asked the college's lawyers to look into drafting a policy.

Board of Regents policy requires professional employees such as professors to clear any outside work with their supervisors .

Sandoval would not tell the Sun whom he was working for when he hired the two college employees to paint the science building. At the time, he was working as a consultant for Tate Snyder Kimsey Architecture as a site coordinator, principal Windom Kimsey said.

Kimsey said his firm hired Sandoval because of his intimate knowledge of the college's three campuses, having overseen construction at CCSN for 15 years.

But the contractor - not Sandoval or the architectural firm - would have been responsible for any hires, Kimsey said.

Frank Martin said his company, which was the general contractor on the project, had not hired Sandoval.

Sandoval left his job as vice president at CCSN to help start Nevada State College in February 2000. He left that job in June 2001 because the state could not cover his salary.

A 2001 attorney general's investigation raised several questions , including ones about nepotism and preferential contracting, regarding Sandoval's conduct at CCSN . A grand jury indicted Sandoval on a misdemeanor charge of nepotism, which a judge later threw out.