By Jon Ralston

Wed, Apr 16, 2008 (2:01 a.m.)

Take a look at the programs that came under the budget knife and then consider those that were spared and you can’t help but see: It cuts both ways.

Gov. No New Taxes, aka Gov. Let’s Form a Budget-Cutting Commission, and his partners in executing the Nightmare on Carson Street, aka the Gang of 63, last week told us they had cut to the bone in bringing the total program losses to more than $900 million. But as they became brothers in arms to attack the state budget, Jim Gibbons and legislators didn’t tell us about the double-edged sword: They have now erased many worthwhile programs, but left some questionable funding intact.

• They bludgeoned funding for gifted and talented programs in schools ($670,000), but left alone $200,000 for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Reno in May 2009.

• They excised a program that would have assisted poor people not eligible for Medicaid to purchase insurance ($1.2 million), but didn’t touch funding for restoring a motorcar at the state railroad museum ($120,000) and money to help acquire the Liberty Belle Antique Slot Machine Collection ($373,100).

• They diminished the grant to help the valuable Mental Health Court in Clark County by $183,210, crossed out $100,000 for fetal alcohol diagnostic clinics and disassembled a pilot program for deaf students ($273,000), but they left alone $228,000 for the Legislature to create an oral history of ... the Legislature.

And that’s just a smattering of what has occurred since December for a variety of reasons some of the funding already had been spent, or someone didn’t want it cut, or funds are in a legislative “disbursement account” that is off limits to the budget-cutters. (This latter, inviolate account, which contains $30 million (!) in end-of-session ornaments, some of which reek of bacon, is explored further in my column this week in In Business Las Vegas.)

I come not to advocate for cuts that diminish the state’s cultural life or to wail about new programs for the disadvantaged that are no more. It is the illogic of it all that is so infuriating.

This is the duality that so frustrates conservatives on one hand and liberals on the other so much that could be cut and so much that could be spent. And the most sterling example is the funding that was cut for AB 146, a law that would have cost only $250,000 and would have forced ambulatory surgical centers to put information online about costs and quality of care. How relevant that seems now, n’-est-ce pas?

Gibbons and his budget-cutting enablers can give all manner of explanations of this schizophrenia, but it’s all noise. The average person will be hard-pressed to understand why $94,600 was appropriated this fiscal year for “the support of programs to promote knowledge of the history and heritage of the central area of the great basin,” and remains intact (spent already, was it?), but that informative Web sites about health care quality or prescription drug prices are gone.

There are no drugs to treat this disease, no pill to pop to make this comprehensible. What’s needed is radical surgery, and in that sense, the governor is right.

Gibbons, who pilfered the idea from somewhere, wants to set up a commission to study where government is inefficient. This is a wonderful idea, although the concept of proposing more cuts in a state where, as he said in another act of rhetorical robbery, we are at the bottom of all the good lists and at the top of all the bad lists (he stole that one from a former opponent, state Sen. Dina Titus) seems insane.

But it is a half-measure. And if the Democrats were willing to step out of the Republican governor’s shadow and put the political calculus aside, they would readily assent to this idea but insist it be done immediately.

I’d call it The Cut and Spend Special Session.

If a recession is the best time to weed out inefficiencies, it’s also the best time to look at where government fails to fund programs in education, in social services, in transportation.

Gibbons and his new best friends in the Legislature should meet in Carson City and lay it all out. All the cuts the Republicans want, all the spending the Democrats desire. And have the debate in about six weeks, when the latest ominous numbers come in. Instead of Gibbons and Co.’s going on another cutting spree, leaving questionable programs intact and cutting meritorious items, they should schedule a midsummer session to settle these questions.

Now that session’s oral history would be worth paying for.