Not all news bad in state budget mess

By Cy Ryan

Thursday, April 3, 2008 | 2 a.m.

State workers will get an unexpected bonus in the latest round of budget adjustments.

Gov. Jim Gibbons says 4 percent cost-of-living raises for state employees and schoolteachers due July 1 will not be affected by any cuts to address Nevada’s nearly $900 million budget shortfall. In January, Gibbons imposed 4.5 percent reductions in state spending to save $564.7 million, but the projected shortfall has grown since then.

Even so, Gibbons said he intends to declare a health insurance premium holiday for state workers, their dependents and retirees enrolled in the Public Employees Benefit Plan. Reserves in the fund will be used to pay July’s premiums.

Last year the Legislature approved a similar holiday for July 2007. Gibbons’ decision to repeat that move this summer would save a married state employee with children $143.

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Henderson Constable Earl Mitchell violated the law when he failed to report about $40,000 a year he received in fees on his annual financial disclosure statement, the state Ethics Commission said.

But the commission also decided Mitchell’s violations were not intentional, so he will not be penalized.

As constable, Mitchell received a salary of $2,400 a year from Clark County. He also collected income from service of small claims, notices, evictions and other legal documents.

During his 13 years in office, Mitchell listed his $2,400 salary on his annual disclosure statement but not the fees on at least seven occasions.

Jim Kosinski, the presiding officer for the commission in the case, said other constables also failed to list additional income from the office.

“It appears that Mitchell’s misunderstanding of the meaning of the term ‘general sources of income’ may be shared by others,” Kosinski said.

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Edward Lee Jones, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death twice, will go before the Nevada Supreme Court on Monday for a third time seeking a new trial.

Defense attorney JoNell Thomas argues Jones did not receive adequate legal representation during his second trial.

But Nancy Becker, Clark County’s chief deputy district attorney and a former Nevada Supreme Court justice, says Jones, now 45, received a fair trial.

Jones, after a night of drinking and smoking crack cocaine with his brother, fatally stabbed his girlfriend, Pamela Williams, in August 1991 in a North Las Vegas trailer home.

He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992. After the state Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1994, Jones was convicted a second time in 1995. The Supreme Court upheld that conviction in 1997.

But Thomas now contends that Jones’ defense attorneys were “highly deficient” in his second trial, arguing that they failed to object to flawed jury instructions, and alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

District Judge Donald Mosley rejected Thomas’ arguments. Thomas appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments at 10 a.m. Monday at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas.