Gov. Jim Gibbons today said he would empanel a commission modeled after former President Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission that looked for ways to cut government spending.

Speaking to the Perspective 2008 audience at the Rio hotel-casino, Gibbons said the commission would do something that studies of Nevada’s tax structure dating to the 1960s have never done: focus on state spending.

“It is time that we re-think government altogether,” said Gibbons.

Reagan’s Grace Commission found $1.9 trillion in wasteful spending, Gibbons said, and changed the mindset about government spending. “I believe that Nevada could and should benefit from a similar process,” the governor said, to applause.

The governor also noted the increase in local government payrolls — he said it was 5.3 percent — far outstripped the private-sector, with a mere 0.02 percent. And he hinted more than once that local government revenues could be shared with the state, a view he’s advocated publicly before. The state’s budget, he said, increased by a whopping 16.8 percent. (Who the hell signed that budget into law? Oh, right.)

Although we are part of the tax-and-spend minority that Gibbons and his lonely conservative soulmates struggle against, we look forward with great anticipation to the Nevada Grace Commission’s results. We think that wasting government money in a time of great need for schools, roads and health care is a sin, and we support any effort to eliminate it, and spend that money where it should be spent.

Plus, conservatives cite “government waste” often in tax debates. We suspect they’ll be surprised at the real number. According to Gibbons, we’ll know what that number is soon.