WEEK IN REVIEW: CARSON CITY

Sunday, May 6, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Gov. Jim Gibbons walked quickly through the brisk air between the sterile exteriors of the Warm Springs Correctional Center, a crowded prison being used to boost the governor's push to build hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new prison cells.

The governor took a tour Thursday to see the conditions for himself.

Gibbons wants to spend $300 million over two years, and $1.2 billion over 10, to build prisons. The idea has many observers shaking their heads, especially given other proposals to reduce populations, either by making parole easier to earn, or revising the three-strikes and mandatory minimum sentencing laws enacted in the mid-1990s that led to the unprecedented levels of incarceration.

A reporter walking with the governor asked rather delicately if maybe things are bad enough in the state - gridlock on Interstate 15 at 2 a.m., crowded schools, crowded prisons - that maybe he should rethink his "no new taxes" pledge.

The question seemed especially apt given the little firestorm Gibbons touched off the same day when he reversed himself on tax breaks for businesses that build environmentally friendly, or green, structures.

Legislators had discovered earlier in the week that their two-year-old law would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when revenues are short. They want to consider rolling back the law, and Gibbons had said that he supported the idea.

But by Thursday, the governor was vowing to veto it.

We can't print the words some Republican legislators used to characterize the governor's intellect after making this move. Filtering out the unprintable, it amounts to a governor who has no idea that even Republicans are ready to override him.

So how did Gibbons respond to that reporter's question about the "no new taxes" pledge and the people who want him to abandon it?

"I don't know who those people are," the governor replied, smiling. "But they aren't the people who elected me."

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