Gibbons may survive a surreal special session

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Every legislative session is surreal; some are more surreal than others.

The 26th special session — aka The Survivor Session — appears destined to rank high in the surreality department as it was christened with news of a confrontation the night before the gavel came down between a prevaricating governor and a television crew as he returned from Washington with his friend with whom he claims he has only has had textual relations (more than 800 times!) — a distraction, to be sure, but an embarrassing one that caused tittering and ridicule of a chief executive trying to look serious.

Day One of The Survivor Session then opened with squabbles over whether education is being cut 10 percent or 2.4 percent (it’s both — I’ll explain) and then, halfway though the day, the Jim Gibbons campaign launched an e-mail missile saying lawmakers “helped lead us into his budget crisis” and have not “offered a real solution which actually balances the Nevada State budget.” That engendered a lot of goodwill — and even more vicious whispers about Gibbons and his text-pal Kathy Karrasch, who Gibbons first denied was with him at a White House event and then later had to apologize to KLAS Channel 8.

Gibbons would have been first voted off the island except, well, he runs the island of surreality known as the state capital, despite rumblings that the often meek Gang of 63 may be willing to challenge the extent of the governor’s executive authority at the state Supreme Court if he goes too far.

In one sense, it was a day like any other day in the Legislative Building: Lawmakers accomplishing little during public sessions except to reiterate they care and to insist there must be a better way than the Gibbons way, while meeting privately with their partisan caucuses and among leaders to try to hash out details of a budget-cutting plan they can live with — and perhaps get either the governor’s signature or render his veto stamp irrelevant before the ink is dry.

I am still not convinced this will not end up in the hands of the state Supreme Court with the first-ever challenge to executive authority and what the Legislature can and can’t do in special session. It won’t be 2003 redux — no enabling of tax increases. But the result could be precedential.

The inanity of the debate on the magnitude of education reductions highlighted why the only survivor of this session may be political posturing. The debate over whether education was being cut 10 percent or 2.4 percent came after a rancorous Monday during which the governor’s chief of staff, Robin Reedy, and Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio engaged in a nasty to and fro — another surreal aspect here is that Democrats and Republicans are much more unified than Gibbons and GOP lawmakers. At 2 p.m., the governor’s office issued a news release declaring, “Governor Gibbons Saves Education From Massive Cuts,” claiming the administration had reduced the slashes to 2.4 percent from 10 percent.

But this was simply clever math: The 10 percent cut to the general fund is intact. Only by amalgamating local funding sources and injecting federal funds could the claim be made. The cut to general fund education spending is still 10 percent, although the other funds certainly mitigate the problem.

But the spin at the Legislature’s expense, exacerbated by the self-congratulatory campaign missive sent by Team Gibbons on Tuesday, caused tempers to flare and lawmakers pummeled the ever-steady Andrew Clinger, the governor’s budget director, for a second consecutive day.

Clinger doesn’t deserve the abuse, but you also understand the Legislature’s frustration with an administration that sends different public and private messages, often contemporaneously, that seems competent at the level just below Gibbons but thoroughly bizarre above it. Whether the governor’s behavior is simply because he has always been a loner or because his grip on reality has deteriorated is unimportant. He doesn’t care. And the provenance is less relevant than the impact: Lawmakers have no use for him, no respect for him and no idea how to deal with him, despite the presence of state employees such as Clinger who are trying their best to keep the ship of state afloat despite their captain’s apparent psychosis.

If the governor would just stay home and behave so the rural Puritans don’t focus on that and give him huzzahs for his “no new taxes (sorta)” mantra, his staffers, campaign and government might not have to carry pooper scoopers around.

Gibbons may be the survivor out of this session, but at what cost to the island?