Hello? Anyone there?

Monday, Aug. 3, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed spending more than half a million dollars on a “stimulus czar” and other state workers to oversee the $2.2 billion in federal stimulus money Nevada is expected to receive.

Gibbons’ request to spend $532,000 was approved Tuesday by the Board of Examiners. The Interim Finance Committee will have to approve the request because it wasn’t in the budget the Legislature passed this year.

The reason it wasn’t in the budget? Because state officials were occupied with the budget deficit, said Robin Reedy, Gibbons’ new chief of staff.

Reedy said the administration has tried to pull people from state agencies to help watch over the money, but tight staffing made that difficult.

“It’s become hard to perform core functions,” she said.

Chalk that up to Gibbons’ anti-government philosophy. Well on his way to gutting state government, Gibbons has left state staff barely able to keep up with “core functions.”

Beyond philosophy, this is a management problem. Gibbons had Mendy Elliott, a deputy chief of staff, overseeing the stimulus money. She was pushed out last month in the governor’s latest attempt to reorganize his office and make it work.

The effort to put in people to oversee the stimulus comes late. Chris Whatley, Washington director for the Council of State Governments, said “the vast majority of states” have people in place to watch stimulus spending.

Nevada’s handling of the stimulus, as well as the Web site designed to track spending, received poor grades in a report released last week by a nonprofit watchdog group. The States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery Coalition also noted that “there is no obvious plan for the stimulus outlined by Gov. Gibbons.”

None of this should be shocking. The Gibbons administration has been devoid of leadership.

Gibbons loves to say, “The people of Nevada deserve a government that works for them, not against them.”

Indeed. He should put his own philosophy into practice.