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Appointment to top tourism post is starting to look shaky
Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Gov. Jim Gibbons appeared to back away from his controversial appointment of the friend of a top adviser to head the state’s Tourism Commission.
Beyond the Sun
On Monday, the commission rejected the governor’s Christmas Eve appointment of Kirk Montero, a manager for US Airways at Reno/Tahoe International Airport, to the $117,000-a-year post. In a 9-0 vote, the panel decided to continue its search for a new executive director.
The vote followed a Las Vegas Sun story reporting the governor had ignored state law in making the appointment. The job is, by law, to be filled following a search by the appointed Tourism Commission.
Gibbons spokesman Dan Burns acknowledged Monday that Montero might not get the post.
“Nine to nothing is pretty persuasive,” Burns said of the commission vote.
The executive director serves at the pleasure of the Tourism Commission, which could dismiss Montero immediately even if the governor were to continue to stand behind his appointee.
Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who is chairman of the Tourism Commission, said the search committee will meet early next month to narrow a list of more than 60 candidates to eight to 10, who will then be interviewed by phone. The top five or six candidates will be interviewed in person.
The governor will choose an executive director from the commission’s three finalists.
Gibbons had justified skirting state law to appoint Montero by arguing the job is too vital to be left vacant during an economic downturn.
Gibbons has also proposed combining the Tourism Commission with the state’s Economic Development Commission as a cost-cutting measure.
“We waited 3 1/2 months and never got a decision” by the Tourism Commission on finalists for the job, Burns said. “The governor feels tourism is so vitally important, especially in this downturn, that
3 1/2 months is a long time to wait for a search.”
The former director, Tim Maland, resigned in September.
In a Dec. 12 letter, Gibbons told Krolicki it was imperative that the commission submit the names of qualified applicants. “I expect the recommendations to include Mr. Kirk Montero, whose resume was hand delivered to your office shortly after the prior Executive Director resigned.”
Burns said the governor was “still looking at legal options.”
Montero told the Sun last week that he got the job without an interview.
He said his references, “a number of whom know the governor,” might have helped him land the position. The list included Tourism Commissioner Bruce Dewing and Howard Weiss, owner of a Reno RV dealership and a close friend of and adviser to the governor.
The Tourism Commission received 67 applications for the job before the Oct. 24 deadline.
Montero’s application was hand-delivered by a member of Gibbons’ office on Nov. 4, according to sources.
There were “some very highly qualified applicants,” but Montero would not have been among the top 10, Commissioner Ryan Sheltra said on Monday.
The commission rejected a proposal to reopen the search and allow Montero’s application to be considered. Krolicki told the commission that legal advice from the state attorney general’s office indicated the process would have to be opened to all if Montero’s late application were accepted.
“With all respect we have to move forward with the existing search,” Krolicki said.
Montero, 60, whose previously worked as a reservations manager for now-defunct Reno Air and owned a tour company in California, was planning to retire from his job with US Airways in February. He said Monday that he still plans to begin work as executive director of the Tourism Commission on Jan. 12.
If Montero attempts to assume the post, Burns said, he will not be paid until he is sworn into office.
“At this point, it doesn’t look like he will be sworn in,” Burns said.
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Once again, Gibbons thinks he can bully and throw his weight around because he thinks he is the Governor???? Gibbons is a sneaky corrupt politician.... Hands down to the Tourism Commission for sticking to their guns... This is the State Of Nevada and we do have laws to abide by..
Yes, Gibbons should abide by the law.
3.5 months is plenty of time for the Tourism Commission to do their duty and submit a list of 3 persons to the Governor.
Under NRS, he can remove the entire commission members for failing to do their duty and replace them.
He should follow the law.
If you read the letters between indicted Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki and Gibbons, you would understand why they chose not to forward names to be considered.
Gibbons' plan is to merge the department with another, and Krolicki's letters explain that they did not see a reason to proceed with the hiring if the program wasn't going to exist in a few months.
The program is being managed by the Deputy Tourism Commissioner. It is operational and saving the state thousands of dollars every month.
I don't know why jfnance32 NOW thinks Gibbons should follow the law, when he didn't in the first place.
First of all, the commission did not follow the law. They are failing to fulfill their duty. 3.5 months is plenty of time to fulfill their respondibilities under the law.
They both need to follow the law.
The commission needs to very soon submit a list with 3 names.
The governor can pick a name from that list and appoint a director.
It is funny that you are mad at Gibbons for not following the law and yet you are excusing and proposing that commission should not follow the law.
NRS 231.210 Director: Qualifications; appointment; restrictions on other employment. The Director of the Commission on Tourism:
1. Must be appointed by the Governor from a list of three persons submitted to him by the Commission.
2. Is responsible to the Commission and serves at its pleasure.
3. Shall, except as otherwise provided in NRS 284.143, devote his entire time to the duties of his office, and he shall not follow any other gainful employment or occupation.
NRS does not give a timetable for naming the three nominees, therefore your assertion that they did not follow the law is false.
Secondly, if you read the first Krolicki letter to the Governor, you would read that they were proceeding with finding 3 candidates.
http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/pdfs/...
That was December 4th. They postponed the search when they learned Gibbons wanted to ELIMINATE THE POSITION NEXT YEAR. Krolicki sent that letter, dated the 8th, to Gibbons to request more information.
A few days after that first letter was sent, a second letter was sent, from Krolicki to Gibbons, asking about eliminating the position and explaining why they had temporarily postponed the search.
http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/pdfs/...
Since you seem to be incapable of reading, let me spell it out for you:
"NCOT must therefore anticipate that this significant reorganization will be reflected in your proposed biennial budget to be submitted to the Legislature early next year, and that it would include the elimination of the NCOT Executive Director position. If this is indeed your intention, then it would be inappropriate and problematic to proceed in a selection process for a position that would expire in 6 months. If this is not the case, then NCOT will proceed swiftly to identify three qualified candidates for your review and final selection."
Get that? Inappropriate and problematic to select someone for a position that would be eliminated in June. Krolicki then stated that if he was not seeking to eliminate/merge the position, he would proceed with the search.
Gibbons response:
http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/pdfs/...
In which he says he plans on requesting consolidation of the agency.
With a deputy commissioner running the program, and no input from the Governor on how to proceed, they suspended their search. NRS statute does NOT give a timetable for naming the candidates.
Gibbons IGNORED the statutes and named someone without consulting the group... which in Krolicki's eyes, is "inappropriate and problematic," based on the timetable.
Krolicki was following the law and conducting a search, and wisely postponed that search when he found out Gibbons seeked to eliminate the program. Gibbons DID NOT FOLLOW THE LAW and randomly appointed a friend of one of his aides.
Get your facts straight.
Again you are proposing that commission not follow the law.
How can you accuse the Governor of not following the law if you are encouraging the commission not to follow the law?
There is nothing in the NRS that allows the commission not to submit a list.
NRS 231.180 The Governor may remove an appointed member from the Commission if the member neglects his duty or commits malfeasance in office.
If the Governor determines that failing to submit a list of names in a reasonable amount of time is neglecting one's duty then he can remove the members that are failing to do their duty.
I doubt that will happen.
The commission has seen the light and reconize that they should follow the law. They are about to give the governor a list of 3 names before the end of January.
You failed to reply to any of the pertinent facts of the case. I'll take that as an admission of your misunderstanding of the situation.
The commission had undertook application evaluations, and was in the midst of the selection process when they learned about Gibbons' plan to ELIMINATE THE POSITION they were selecting for. This was a few short weeks ago.
They wisely postponed the search and requested info from Gibbons. The commission told Gibbons that if he was NOT seeking the elimination of the position, they would continue their search, otherwise it would be "inappropriate and problematic" to appoint someone to a position that would be eliminated in a few months.
Gibbons response: I seek to have the position eliminated.
What they did was COMPLETELY legal. NRS does not outline a timeline for naming replacments, but it DOES OUTLAW Gibbons selecting someone who was not forwarded from the search committee.
You have a comical reading of the law, jfnance32.
Again, get your facts straight. I even gave you the language of the NRS statute that Gibbons violated.
Please give me the NRS statute that the commission violated. Give me the NRS that says the commission has to name candidates within a timeframe.
There is no such statute, you know it, and you know Gibbons violated the law.
Stop being so cowardly.
NRS 231.180 gives Gibbons the power to replace commission members if they violate the law or if they neglect their duties.
The commission members did no such thing. In fact, the search was underway and they paused it when they found out Gibbons' plans and asked for clarification.
Gibbons, on the other hand, flaunted his violation of NRS 231.210 with his appointment of his crony.
Also, "respondibilities" again! That's not a word, nance.
The commission at one point in time said that they were not going to submit a list because of possibilities of the budget down the road.
That is not an valid legal excuse to not to submit a list.
They were failing to do their duty to submit a list in a reasonable time period.
There is no legal excuse for that. It is their duty to do that and not the governor's duty. There is nothing in the NRS that they need input from the governor to submit a list in a timely manner.
They have realized the error of their illegal ways and are now going to submit a list.
So your original assertion, that the commission "violated the law" was not true. You failed to identify a law that was broken. You failed to give NRS numbers. You failed to identify any wording of statutes that the commission violated.
There is nothing in NRS that prevents them from deferring the search while they obtain more information. The search was underway and applications were being reviewed. Again, you fail to show which statute was violated, therefore your argument is debunked.
Your assertion that the commission "violated the law" was false.
So my question stands: Why should Gibbons bother to follow the law AFTER Gibbons broke it?
If you want to go back forth repeating over and over and over again the same argument then I am OK with.
NRS 231.210 The Director of the Commission on Tourism:
1. Must be appointed by the Governor from a list of three persons submitted to him by the Commission
NRS 231.180 The Governor may remove an appointed member from the Commission if the member neglects his duty or commits malfeasance in office.
It is the Governor that gets to determine if a commissioner is neglecting his/her duty and not you or me.
If they continued their decision not to submit a list then the Governor should have ruled that they failed to do their duty and removed them.
There is no need to do that.
The commission has realized the errors of the decisions are now on the road to submit a list of 3 names.
So, since he didn't remove anyone, they didn't "violate the law" like you falsely claimed just a few hours ago, then?
That's what I thought.
My point stands: Gibbons openly violated the law and there is no excuse.
Your attempts to cloud the issue have failed.
"First of all, the commission did not follow the law. They are failing to fulfill their duty."
They undertook the evaluation of the applications. They have not violated any law, nor have the failed to fulfill their duties.
Gibbons blatantly broke the law in appointing a crony. He did not appoint anyone from a recommendation of the commission, he appointed a friend.
The issue here is Gibbons' unlawful appointment.
It is up to the Governor to determine if they are failing in their duty. He gets to make that decision. He could, if he wanted to, say that not submitting a list within 3 months is a failure in duty.
Also, the commission sent a letter to the Governor saying that they have stopped the interviewing process.
They should have never stopped the process.
They were failing in their duty.
They have realized that stopping the process was a failure to fulfill their duty and have resume the process.
So since Gibbons did not replace anyone on the commission, they followed the law. You were wrong.
Instead, Gibbons circumvented the law and appointed one of his friends.
Republicans must be so proud.
If the commission did their duty in a timely fashion than all this would not have exist.
They failed to do their duty in a timely fashion.
The commission had decided to stop the process and not submit a list.
Gibbons believe it was in the best in of the state to have a director.
His actions has resulted in the commission getting off their butts and work toward submitting a list.
I think that he should have just removed them from the commission, but I guess he wanted to give them a chance to do their job.
He should have followed the law. Removed the members from the commission. Appointed new commissioners. Received a list of 3 candidates. Picked one from the list.
The commission stopped due to public statements by the Governor, and they made repeated attempts to contact the Governor to clarify the situation. (See the two letters I referenced above.)
They followed the law. You were wrong.
Instead, Gibbons circumvented the law and appointed one of his friends.
I'm still waiting to see where in the statutes it outlines a definitive timeline for returning three applicants.
I'm waiting.
According to the law, the commission needs zero input from the Governor to generate a list.
They are duty bound to present a list of 3 candidates in a reasonable time period.
The governor has the discretion to determine if the commission is failing to do their duty.
He saw that there were failing to do their duty.
His actions has resulted in the commission returning to their duty to generate a list of 3 candidates.
I would have recommended a different approach but the Governor decided this course of action.
The final result will be that the commission will after much delay sumbit a list of 3 candidates for the Governor to choose from.
His actions caused them to postpone the search in the first place. Had Governor Gibbons not made public statements that led the board to question whether the position they were empaneled to fill would be eliminated.
Gibbons refused to give them a straight answer, and circumvented them entirely.
He broke the law in appointing someone who had not applied in time and was not vetted by the commission to a position.
Only you would find a way to blame this on the commission.
If they were doing as you said, then he should have replaced them. He did not. Instead, he chose to break the law on something as trivial as a tourism chief?
Of course your job is easier if you just choose to ignore statute.
Speaking of which... what statute did the panel violate?
You still haven't answered that one.
It is simple. The commission does not one inch of help from the governor to submit a list of 3 names.
It has been 3.5 months. Why do they need so much time to pick 3 names?
They choose to stop the process on their own.
The governor was tried of waiting. He choose to kick start the process because they were unwilling to do their duty and submit 3 names.
It worked.
They are now working on submitting 3 names which is their duty to do so.
I see.
They followed the law.
You have no statute that was violated by the commission.
The tourism commission continues to operate normally, and is being led by the deputy director.
Rather than wait, Gibbons chose to violate the law.
Huh, this was simple.
Yes, it is that simple.
They were failing in their duty.
The Governor help them realized that they were failing in their duty.
Now the commission is working to fulfill their duty.
Too bad Gibbons failed his duty to follow the law.
Too bad the Governor had to remind the commission to do their duty.
Oh I see, next time a commission isn't fast enough for you, break the law.
Jfnance32's precedent of the day.
Of course instead, we should follow the ksand99 precedent of the day which is to encourage the commission not to sumbit a list and have them totally failed in their basic duties.
No, it was very reasonable for the commission to wait to appoint a director of a program that Gibbons wanted to eliminate.
Who wants to hire someone whose job will be gone a couple of months later when you have someone already running the program?
I guess jfnance32 does.
I'll take postponing a selection committee over BREAKING THE LAW any day, jfnance32.
"No, it was very reasonable for the commission to wait to appoint a director of a program that Gibbons wanted to eliminate."
There is nothing in the NRS that allows the commission to to decide not to submit a list a names.
Perhaps you have a secret version of the NRS that allows the commission to willingfully decide not to submit a list of names and totally disregard their basic duty to do so.
"There is nothing in the NRS that allows the commission to to decide not to submit a list a names."
They had communicated their intent to Gibbons to pause it pending Gibbons' response. Based on the letters, the search was well underway, and they were willing to continue the search based on Gibbons' answers... so your sad attempt to blame the commission fails.
There is nothing in NRS which specifies a timeframe, another "argument" that fails.
And if you accept your argument that Gibbons got them back on track, why did he then break the law?
They have been "pausing" it for months now.
It does not take 3.5 months to generate a list of names.
There had already shut down the process before the Governor made the appointment. They even said that in the letter.
The Governor has the power via NRS to determine if they are failing to meet a timeline test. He could have determine that they were failing their duty by dragging out the process.
It was his actions that trigger them to write the first letter. His appointment came before the first letter. It was his actions that kick their butts into gear and now they are back on track.
"They have been "pausing" it for months now."
Geez, another lie.
Krolicki sent a letter THIS MONTH saying they were going to pause the search if Gibbons decided he was going to merge the office.
So no, it has not been for "months" now. It's been less than 30 days.
So we're back to you lying again, huh? I wondered how long it would take.
"There had already shut down the process before the Governor made the appointment. They even said that in the letter."
So that excuses breaking the law? Couldn't he have just sent a letter back requesting names by the end of the month... you know, like any NORMAL person would do?
You said he had the power to replace members, why didn't he do that?
"It was his actions that trigger them to write the first letter. His appointment came before the first letter. It was his actions that kick their butts into gear and now they are back on track."
This is just an ABSOLUTE LIE.
"His appointment came before the first letter. "
Montero's appointment happened on 12/24. The first letter was 12/4. Twenty days prior. Stop lying to cover your horrible arguments.
More lies from jfnance32. LOL!
Do you really think it takes more than 3 months to generate a list of 3 names?
No wonder you think that the government does a great job.
So I expose several of your lies and that's your response, jfnance32?
Yes, it was wise of the commission to defer filling the position if they thought it would be quickly eliminated. It was wise of them to request Gibbons' position. They broke no laws, and are prepared to forward names to Gibbons shortly... merely two weeks or so after Gibbons replied.
But to just lie about the facts of the case, especially when they are so easily verified? That's pathetic.
To make a long story short... Gibbons broke another law and almost got away with it... Almost... End of Story...
I see Jfnance 32 is showing you all how to make a corrupt Republican look innocent and put the blame some where else.Your efforts to show him the light will fail, he does not exist in the real world. Do not ask him the current price of gasoline or what the current interest rates are on savings accounts and money markets. He will boggle your mind. Of course everything that is wrong with Nevada and the world is Harry Reids and Clintons fault. The world knows Nevada has an incompetent,corrupt Governor. ksand 99 your points and others who post on this issue are valid, beware your effforts are futile with 'nance'.
Gibbons tried the same thing to appoint a position to the Taxicab Authority. The Attorney General's office found he had no authority to make that appointment either.
Sebelius does a nice job of destroying Nance's argument:
http://blogs.lvcitylife.com/various-thin...
"Get it? Gibbons didn't make a formal appointment to subvert the law! He made the appointment to hurry those dilly-dallying commissioners along, to make them do their jobs! It was all a grand master plan from the start! Why, the man is a genius."
"Unless". Wait, you don't think this is something they made up, a latter-day excuse to make it look like Gibbons might actually know or care about what state law says? This couldn't be a desperate gambit to prove the collective IQ of the chief executive's office is not a negative number, could it? Because to think the state was led by a man like that, well, it just takes some of the joy out of living in Nevada, frankly."