Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Ex-regents can now work for system

Former university system Regent Linda Howard and others who have left the board recently are no longer barred from applying for jobs with the system.

Bart Patterson, the Nevada System of Higher Education's chief lawyer, has advised the board that it will have difficulty enforcing a 2005 policy that forbids regents from seeking work in the system for one year after they leave office.

"There is an issue of fairness in terms of applying something retroactively to someone who is already in office before the policy is adopted," Patterson said.

A regent could argue that his or her right to work was being denied, especially if that regent's chosen field is higher education. Ultimately, enforcing the policy on those regents would not be worth the legal battle, Patterson told regents.

An outside lawyer, Walter Cannon, came to the same conclusion.

Patterson's decision would allow Howard, a North Las Vegas resident, and former Regents Jill Derby and Doug Hill to apply for system jobs without waiting a year.

Derby and Howard worked for the system before becoming regents, but only Howard has shown interest in a job, specifically at UNLV, higher education officials said.

Howard did not return calls from the Sun for comment. Derby said she has no plans to seek a system job.

Craig Walton, president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, said that regents should voluntarily observe the policy.

Otherwise, it looks as if the only reason they ran for public office was to "use it as leverage for future employment," Walton said. "And that stinks."

The regents who pushed for the waiting period - Michael Wixom, James Dean Leavitt, Steve Sisolak and Mark Alden - agreed with Walton about voluntary compliance.

"The cooling-off period that was adopted by the Board of Regents was an important message that the purpose of public service is just that - for service, not any personal or private gain," Leavitt said.

Howard's case does have extenuating circumstances, regents said. She graduated from UNLV with a master's degree in public administration the same month regents enacted the policy. Her degree work focused on higher education administration, and she hoped to work for the system.

The policy might also have kept Howard from taking a graduate assistant job as a doctoral student at UNLV, another option she was pursuing.

Chancellor Jim Rogers said his main concern was ensuring the public that regents could never use their influence as a regent to gain a job with the system. He did not see a problem with allowing Howard to apply for work now that she is out of office.

The policy was enacted after former Regent Doug Seastrand accepted a job with UNLV's Research Foundation while still on the board in April 2005.

State law forbids public officials from using their office for personal gain, but only the Public Utilities Commission and Gaming Control Board have explicit cooling-off periods forbidding former board members from applying for jobs.

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