Jon Ralston on Gibbons’ cuckoo’s nest

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, Sept. 21, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons was more than halfway into a speech touted as his attempt to address the effect of the mortgage crisis in Nevada before he mentioned the word "foreclosure."

Until then, a packed Nevada Development Authority breakfast crowd had listened to a recitation of statistics and rhetoric illustrating how wonderful the Nevada economy is purring along - partly, he generously informed us, thanks to the man who was speaking.

Once Gibbons finally arrived at the putative subject of his remarks, the governor declined to say how he would deal with the problem besides calling a summit and concluded by once again reassuring everyone that he will stand at the ramparts to fend off any assaults on the state's economic vitality from "ideologues determined to undermine our success."

The stubborn paranoia of that construction notwithstanding, the avoidance of the subject - the teensy-weensy problem that Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation by a factor of three - is emblematic of a governor who generally seems in denial about organizational and structural infirmities that threaten any initiative he may undertake.

Even if Gibbons can importune major lenders at this summit (good photo op!) to help save Nevada homes from foreclosure, his administration is a dysfunctional mess that seems incapable of executing anything this important. The evidence runs the gamut from unfathomable personnel moves to extraordinarily botched appointments to transparent political moves.

It's as if Gibbons turned over the administration of state government to a cuckoo's nest of characters and allowed them to marginalize or dispatch the few qualified (and sane) operatives. Just as he wants to talk about the state's "phenomenal" economic vitality while minimizing the mortgage lending crisis, the governor seems totally supportive of his senior management team as he continues to hemorrhage quality folks to the private sector.

For those awaiting any Oct. 4 summit revelation, remember that the governor's man to fix all of this is Joe Waltuch, a former senior executive at a now-bankrupt subprime lender under investigation by the feds. But Waltuch's appointment - and the clumsy attempt to cover up his most recent employment - is only the most dramatic of a string of personnel moves that have put the administration at risk.

All of this was foreshadowed at the outset when Gibbons essentially allowed his wife, Dawn, to choose his chief of staff over the man, Robert Uithoven, who ran his gubernatorial campaign and deserved the post. Dawn Gibbons persuaded her compliant husband to choose the man she sees as almost a surrogate son, Mike Dayton, who had been ousted from Gibbons' congressional office years ago.

The first lady actually had the idea to make Dayton and ex-Washoe County Commissioner Dianne Cornwall co-chiefs of staff, but that was quickly scotched and Cornwall was installed as Dayton's deputy.

That was a prescription for disaster on so many levels - and the prescription has been filled.

Dayton and Cornwall have alienated many inside and outside state government, so it was somehow fitting that they recently engineered the cashiering of Tray Abney, the policy maven who almost single-handedly turned around the governor's standing in the Legislative Building.

Abney developed a rapport with lawmakers from both parties, and without him the governor might not have been able to get some key proposals enacted. He is a smart, talented and ethical man - and thus, apparently, has no place in a Gibbons administration. (It is no coincidence that the only other Gibbonsite with any credibility with the Legislature - Steve Robinson - also has departed and this week went to work for R&R Partners, a company, ironically, seen as unfriendly to the governor.)

This has been handled in the usual ham-handed way, which seems to be the default method in his administration. The same low-level minion dispatched to knock Rosemary Vassiliadis, the No. 2 person at McCarran, off the Nevada Homeland Security Commission recently informed Joe Brown, who only happens to be the Republican national committeeman, that he was no longer on the state Athletic Commission. Competence and class - the hallmarks of this crew.

Those may seem minor transgressions to average folks, but they do not stand alone and are part of the politics of subtraction the administration is playing that ultimately will cause serious damage.

Maybe Gibbons will, despite all of this, produce a compelling program on Oct. 4 to help solve the foreclosure crisis and show he can address other pressing state problems. But a credible, respected staff is the backbone of any successful administration , and the governor better start acting like a vertebrate before it's too late.