Educrats give fat cat relatives a 'bye'

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:52 GMT
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 19, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Educrats give fat cat relatives a 'bye'

Last year, Carol Harter, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, expressed frustration that no suitable position had been found to woo her husband from his job in California.

When Ms. Harter's foot-stomping took her as far as a job interview at Florida Atlantic (or Manatee Community College, or whatever the place was called), Nevada university system officials got on the ball and hand-crafted a special public relations job for Mike Harter, funded half by the university system and half by the University of Nevada School of Medicine.

Mr. Harter had turned down earlier offers because they paid less than $100,000, but this time officials got it right: Mr. Harter will start his new $120,000-a-year job next month.

Needless to say, no one else was even considered for the made-up job.

Shortly after Douglas Ferraro became provost of UNLV, his wife, Sandra O'Dell, was flown out to Las Vegas to interview for a faculty position which had long "lain dormant."

Should we be surprised that Ms. O'Dell got the job? After all, the spouses of Dean William Wells and associate provosts Stephen Rice and Barbara Cloud already work in the college system. Besides, it turns out Ms. O'Dell was the only candidate brought in to "apply."

As revealed in the June 11 Review-Journal by reporters Natalie Patton and Jane Ann Morrison, three relatives of Ron Meek, provost of the Community College of Southern Nevada, hold down jobs in the system. But Meek's struggle to keep his family fed pales in comparison to the efforts of Orlando Sandoval, who competed with no other candidates for his current state post, a $125,000-a-year job as vice president of a phantom state college which hasn't even been funded yet.

Sandoval has at least four family members on the community college payroll, including his father-in-law, Duane Stevens, who was hired by the Community College of Southern Nevada as an air-conditioning and heating technical in 1991, some six years after Sandoval started as the college's physical plant director.

Since then, Mr. Stevens' rise in the CCSN maintenance bureaucracy has been little short of meteoric. In 1995, Steven was promoted to special projects manager with an annual salary of $42,000. By July of last year, he was receiving another little cost-of-living raise, from $54,000 to $60,000.

State nepotism laws, such as they are, forbade Mr. Sandoval from directly supervising a close relative like Mr. Stevens. This was gotten around by the simple expedient of having Mr. Stevens report to Operations and Maintenance Director Sal Saporito, who in turn reported to son-in-law Sandoval.

Isn't that slick?

Now, it would not be very sensible to ban any relative of a state employee from holding down any other state job.

But do we really need to ask who gets hurt, here?

First, who can believe students are getting the best that money can buy when normal, competitive hiring processes are bypassed to run in these ringers?

Second, how would you like to be a qualified applicant who was told there were "no openings" in Ms. O'Dell's department ... shortly before that "dormant" position was rediscovered, just for her?

The Legislature doesn't pick dollar bills off the mesquite trees. Someone eventually has to pay these salaries. Should the children of struggling Nevada taxpayers really settle for cold cereal on Sunday nights just because the Harters couldn't figure out how to get by on Mrs. Harter's paltry $186,000 ... plus benefits?

Visiting Chicago, an attendant to the famously parsimonious Cal Coolidge noted to the president that the windy city's streetcars had been painted a different color since their last visit. "On one side, anyway," responded Silent Cal, who was loathe to jump to a conclusion.

Taking this month's Cal Coolidge Award is Chief Nevada Regent Jill Derby, who's supposed to watchdog such abuses but who would apparently refuse to acknowledge there's a forest so long as her view was blocked by so many trees. Asked about all this last week, Ms. Derby replied "I don't think there is special treatment given to family members" in hires like those of Mr. Harter and Ms. O'Dell.

Good one, Jill. What about that "round earth" thing? Jury still out?

Regent Steve Sisolak is closer to the mark, noting "I've gotten calls from people who say they were passed over for jobs and they think it's because the job was going to someone else all along. ... To me, it's important that members of the public have the same opportunities to apply for these jobs and that family and friends don't get special treatment."

Mr. Sisolak is correct. The real concern here is the obvious bypassing of standard, open, competitive hiring practices.

Those procedures should be put back in place and rigorously enforced. And the next person who bypasses them ... should be looking for work at Manatee State.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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