Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons hasn’t just been wandering around in a post-election haze! He’s been picking a transition team, and one of the members will surprise you. In addition to resurrecting Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt from the Where Are They Now? file, Gibbons also tapped former Gov. Robert List (currently a shill for the pro-Yucca Mountain nuclear energy industry) and former Gov. Richard Bryan.

Did we just say Richard Bryan? Why, yes, we did!

Now, you might ask yourself what a former Democratic governor and United States senator would be doing anywhere near a Republican governor who says Ronald Reagan is his political hero and who was only too happy to engage in vicious attacks against Democrat Dina Titus during the campaign.

And so did we. We placed a quick call to Bryan’s office to see if perhaps he’s been taken hostage, but we only got the answering machine. But in a statement released by the Gibbons campaign, Bryan was quoted thus: "I’m honored to assist Gov.-elect Gibbons as part of his transition team. The election is over. Regardless of our political affiliation, as Nevadans we should do all we can to enable the governor-elect to meet his obligation to all citizens of the state. I applaud this bipartisan approach."

Wethinks that perhaps Bryan’s job — one of the top lawyers for Lionel, Sawyer & Collins — has taken some of the partisan edge off. It’s always nice to be able to get a phone call returned from the governor’s office, you know. And it’s not like he was a big Titus fan. He was a signatory to the infamous non-endorsement endorsement of her primary rival, Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.

In addition to the team of top political figures, Gibbons has also tapped businessman Monte Miller of Las Vegas and Patty Wade of Northern Nevada to direct his transition, according to the statement. (No, it’s not the same Monty Miller who’s admitted to bribing ex-Clark County Recorder turned photographer Frances Deane.)

If nothing else, Gibbons has demonstrated that he can be bipartisan (by including Bryan), forgiving (by including Hunt, who savaged him on the campaign trail) and confounding (by including a guy who is among the top advocates for Yucca Mountain, a project Gibbons has always opposed).

According to the statement, "the transition team has two primary missions: (1) to identify the issues that will receive the greatest emphasis in his administration and (2) to find qualified candidates for appointed positions. Together, these two functions help define the administration of the next governor."

Wait, isn’t Gibbons supposed to identify the issues that will receive the greatest emphasis in his administration? And isn’t Sig Rogich supposed to find qualified candidates for appointed positions?

Once again, we see the sorry results of a Seinfeld Campaign about nothing (except for parroting a line about keeping taxes low over and over again): A committee to figure out what the hell the guy is going to do! That’s normally something somebody decides before they even run for office.

Then again, Gibbons could do a lot worse than Bryan and Hunt. We’re counting on you two!

UPDATE: Sen. Bryan returned our call to confirm that, in fact, he is not being held hostage. Which is good, because we were worried.

Bryan did say, however, that Republicans and Democrats should want Gibbons to be successful, for the good of the state. "I realize not everybody will be pleased," he said. "I suspect that there will be some Democratic partisans who will be upset."

The recent elections, Bryan said, were a message to politicians of both parties. "The public was sending a strong message, saying ‘you guys, we expect you to work together,’" he said.

Las Vegas City Manager Doug Selby’s decision to close Huntridge Circle Park on Maryland Parkway will certainly be viewed by cynics as a response not to the Friday stabbing of a homeless man by another, but to a U.S. District Court’s order that the city’s Please-Don’t-Feed-The-Homeless ordinance was struck down.

Which is to say, that’s how we view it.

But the city, in a city statement released Monday night, maintains it was Friday’s homicide — and other violent crimes that have taken place in the park — that promoted Selby to use his authority to close the park.

"It breaks my heart that we have to close the park, but I have to make sure the people in the park are safe," said Councilman Gary Reese, in the statement. "We can’t take the chance that someone else gets hurt there. We’ll look at the issues and try to find a solution that works for everyone."

First, please. If Reese wanted the park open, it would be open. Because while the city may operate under a strong city manager form of government — in which Selby runs day-to-day operations — he has pretty much proven that "strong city manager" is nothing but a political theory in Las Vegas. If Reese or Mayor Oscar Goodman told him to keep the park open, he’d do it in a second.

Second, please, again. Plenty of places in town are the scenes of violent crime, and they have not been closed to the public. This is a radical overreaction to a problem, which cast against the backdrop of the city’s antipathy toward homeless people and those who help them, looks nothing if not monumentally petty.

Third, mega-please: Finding a solution that works for everyone has never been the city’s goal. Herding the homeless to a place whey they’re comfortably out of sight and out of mind has been the city’s goal. If the city is really committing to looking at the issues and finding a solution that works for everyone, that would represent a major change of policy. A welcome one, to be sure, but undeniably a new course.

No matter how much the city protests, we simply cannot see this as anything other than a drastic action taken in response to the fact that a blatantly unconstitutional city ordinance was struck down, as it should have been. But while lawyers argue in court, and the city posts guards at our city parks, the homeless problem remains unresolved. Whether that’s because of stubbornness, ignorance or the lack of serious leadership is immaterial.