By Cy Ryan (contact)

Thu, Sep 4, 2008 (4:06 p.m.)

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons has named a state administrator to the board of directors of the 42,000-member state insurance system.

Leo Drozdoff, administrator of the state Division of Environmental Protection, will replace District Judge Janet Berry of Reno, who was removed from the board last month after it was found that elected officials are barred by law from being a member of the board.

Drozdoff will represent active members in the Public Employees Benefits Program.

Gibbons also chose George Campbell, a retired lawyer from the Nevada Attorney General’s Office who lives in Washoe Valley, to replace Ron Swirczek of Carson City.

Reappointed to the board for a second term was Jacque Ewing-Taylor, a research fellow at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Gibbons decided initially not to reappoint Swirczek and Ewing-Taylor because of their support for expanding the insurance coverage to include domestic partners, both of the same and opposite sex. Employee groups urged the governor to reappoint Ewing-Taylor because she was supporting domestic partnership benefits sought by the university that she represented on the board.

The regulation permitting gay couples to be covered by the state insurance plan was approved by the Legislative Commission. But it faces an uphill battle in the Legislature next year because it would increase costs by more than $4 million a year.