Acting administrator of taxicab authority resigns

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 | 4:28 p.m.

Tom Czehowski, acting administrator of the Nevada Taxicab Authority, resigned today, 10 days after the agency’s five-member board voted unanimously not to forward his name to the governor as a prospective permanent appointee.

Czehowski was appointed by Gov. Jim Gibbons in May to replace Richard Land, who was dismissed without explanation.

But Czehowski was the fifth choice of the authority board to fill the job when it interviewed candidates in August.

Elisabeth Shurtleff, public information officer for the Department of Business and Industry, confirmed Czehowki’s departure with a release announcing that he has resumed his role as chief administrative officer at the Department of Industrial Relations – Occupational Safety and Health Section.

Shurtleff said Gail Anderson, deputy director of the Department of Business and Industry, would oversee the Taxicab Authority in the interim.

In August, the authority board forwarded the names of three candidates to fill the administrator position. But in January, Taxicab Authority chairwoman Kathryn Werner-Collins received a letter from Mendy Elliott, director of the Department of Business and Industry, saying two of the three candidates the authority board selected “did not pass preliminary background checks” conducted by her office.

Elliott did not say which of the three candidates failed to pass background checks. The three candidates were selected from a list of 14 applicants, 10 of whom were interviewed publicly in the special board meeting in August. Werner-Collins said she assumed that when the authority board received the names of the 14 applicants that they had already been screened in background checks by Elliott’s office.

At the board’s January meeting, members voted unanimously to reject Elliott’s request to forward the names of the No. 4 and No. 5 choices for administrator to her, which would have put Czehowski in contention.