Gibbons showed yet again he’s an embarrassment to Nevadans

Amazingly, Gov. Jim Gibbons gave the best speech he’s ever given with his second State of the State on Thursday. His delivery surpassed his past speeches. He looked generally gubernatorial. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. At times, he was practically persuasive. And he definitely was true to his principles.

Yet in content, Jim Gibbons was a joke, an embarrassment to Nevadans.

The man wants to cut the budgets of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas by 52 percent and the University of Nevada, Reno by 47 percent. Oh, he didn’t bother to mention that in the speech, you found that minor detail in Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley’s Democratic response that focused on facts, avoiding emotion.

If those jaw-dropping numbers had been in Gibbons’ speech, most likely even the Republican legislators who applauded him regularly (applause usually started by GOP State Chair Sue Lowden and a couple of other plants) might have sat there stunned instead of cheering him on.

Or maybe not. After all, for the No New Taxes crowd, Jim Gibbons is the answer to their prayers.

Gee, Governor, why not just close one of the two universities? That would save a lot of money. You talked about eliminating duplication of services, why not just eliminate UNLV — because with his Northern Nevada roots, it would be the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, not the University of Nevada, Reno.

Gibbons has embarrassed Nevadans since even before he was elected, even though none of the investigations resulted in charges. He wasn’t charged with assaulting a cocktail waitress. He wasn’t charged with trying to pressure an Elko official to catch a tax break. He wasn’t charged with any impropriety involving his friend Warren Trepp. Yet all have been embarrassing. Let’s not touch on the embarrassment of his pending divorce.

But nothing is more embarrassing than a governor who believes the university and community college system can survive after its funding is whacked by 36 percent, with the two universities taking a bigger thwacking than the community colleges.

Sure, higher education has grown at the expense of K-12 over the years when times were better. I’m not about to claim the system shouldn’t take a hit.

But don’t you wonder if there’s something personal in the hit that Gibbons laid on higher education? Like the man is tired of all those frothing-at-the-mouth letters from University Chancellor Jim Rogers and wanted to show who is boss?

I expected Rogers would go ballistic, but in his phone interview on Las Vegas ONE, Rogers was restrained. Maybe he had to work up to the point where he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “I would blow my brains out if I thought this was going through.”

Perhaps cuts of 36 percent to higher education makes the governor’s earlier request for 14 percent cuts look reasonable. Maybe it’s just a bluff.

Anybody can scream that Gibbons’ cuts will devastate higher education. But what are the options?

Speaker Buckley, leader of the Assembly Democrats, promised the Legislature would “overhaul our financial structure so that we are not considering draconian cuts to education and public safety every time the economy tanks.”

Meanwhile, the man who knows the budget best, Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who has worked to add programs and dollars to higher education, won’t sit by and watch programs be gutted or eliminated. He’s at the sunset of his career with little to lose. But doing the right thing is going to kill a lot of political careers.

Gibbons’ career is already dead. One sign of that is that he’s raised not quite $260,000, one quarter of potential Democratic challengers Buckley and Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid. Surely some of the governor’s donors are ashamed they’ve given even that, now that his budget is out there for everyone to see. Surely the gaming executives who tout education and supported the “Education First” governor are having some regrets.

Meanwhile, on a trivial note, who is going to take credit for failing to capitalize “God” in the official version of the governor’s speech? At the end, it reads, “god bless you, god bless Nevada.”

Trivial but telling. It sounded good, but upon closer scrutiny, it doesn’t look right — much like the best speech Jim Gibbons has ever given. And it’s embarrassing.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison/.