CSN official faces felony charges

By Jeff German, Charlotte Hsu

Friday, Sept. 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

William “Bob” Gilbert, the College of Southern Nevada’s beleaguered construction chief, and three of his employees were indicted by a county grand jury Thursday on felony charges of stealing materials and equipment from the college to build his dream home on Mount Charleston.

Gilbert, 49, was charged with 13 counts of theft and four counts of misconduct by a public officer in a 34-count indictment that is expected to be returned in District Court this morning, according to sources close to the investigation.

“Based on the evidence gathered during the investigation, it is clear that Mr. Gilbert built his million-dollar house on the backs of Nevada taxpayers,” Chief Deputy Attorney General Conrad Hafen said.

Hafen said the Sun’s dogged reporting on the theft allegations provided the “primer” for the 18-month criminal investigation, which he described as the most significant, in terms of alleged corruption, ever undertaken by the attorney general’s 5-year-old Public Integrity Unit.

Sun reporter Christina Littlefield broke the story in March 2007 after more than a dozen former and current college employees told her they’d witnessed Gilbert misuse his position at the college. Employees accused Gilbert of directing multiple $400,000 college contracts to subcontractors in exchange for their working on his ranch-style estate for free or at reduced cost. Employees also alleged Gilbert used college materials, equipment and employees to develop the four-acre mountain property.

The materials allegedly stolen in the scheme included lumber, cinder blocks, door handles and door locks, sources said. A manlift, a paint sprayer and a chain hoist also are among the items allegedly taken from the college.

The three employees, who worked under Gilbert in CSN’s Facilities Management Department — Thad Skinner, 64, Matthew Goins, 56, and George Casal, 59 — were charged Thursday with assisting in the alleged thefts, which the sources said occurred from January 2002 to June 2007. Skinner is a construction manager for the college, Goins is a facility manager, and Casal is a building construction inspector. Their salaries range from about $66,000 to about $74,000.

In June 2007, state investigators conducted court-authorized searches at Gilbert’s college offices and home to gather the evidence that led to this week’s indictment.

Gilbert returned to his $147,204-a-year associate vice president’s job July 1 following a year of paid leave. He told the Sun he had requested the leave so he could spend his time proving his innocence.

Stepping to his defense this month were two people who not long ago were embroiled in a different college controversy — John Cummings, a CSN English professor and former lobbyist for the college, and Ron Remington, the college’s president from 2001 to ’04.

In 2003, regents, who govern higher education, demoted both men following closed meetings, after Cummings and Remington were accused of seeking to bring four-year degree programs to CSN without regents’ permission. A District Court judge later ruled the Board of Regents had violated open-meeting laws by holding closed sessions before the demotions.

Cummings sent Hafen an e-mail Sept. 14 that contained letters from Remington and Richard Carpenter, CSN’s president from 2004 to ’07, defending Gilbert.

“As this ordeal appeared to be dragging on concerning Bob and CSN,” Cummings wrote, “I did contact Presidents Carpenter and Remington and apprised them that a grand jury was soon to convene and that I believed that the areas of the Attorney General investigator’s interest were in the least simply uninformed and at the most potentially dangerous and blatantly misleading and embarrassing.”

In their letters, the two former presidents said Gilbert had kept college equipment at his home to do maintenance and repair work on CSN and other state colleges’ property because the schools were short on shop space.

Remington, an educational consultant who lives in Spring Creek, wrote that in 2003 “Gilbert and his staff dismantled several general labs and converted them to nursing labs by taking those materials to his Kyle Canyon property and cutting and welding to suit the need of nursing labs.”

In an interview, Remington said he wrote the letter because “I just wanted to clarify a few things ... Without understanding the circumstances, having equipment at home doesn’t sound very good.”

Carpenter, however, offered no such explanation in numerous discussions with the Sun during his tenure as president. More recently he has been unavailable for comment.

Gilbert told the Sun in 2007 that construction materials on his ranch belonged to him, and that what might have appeared to be CSN property was his and was left over from when he was a private contractor doing work for the college. CSN police later reported that serial numbers on materials and equipment on Gilbert’s property did not match those on equipment and materials CSN owned.