The Sacramento Bee reports the move comes as the governor strives to deal with a $15.2 billion deficit in a budget that’s one month overdue. An executive order that Schwarzenegger will sign next week will reduce the salaries of more than 200,000 government workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour.

Apparently, California has budget reserves to continue to pay employees through September; after that, if no new budget is passed, the state will be forced to the equivalent of getting cash advances on its credit cards.

Here in Nevada, no state workers have been laid off nor has pay been reduced for anyone despite budget cuts and accounting maneuvers that total about $1.2 billion. Worker layoffs have been mentioned if deeper cuts are required; universities have indicated that faculty contracts won’t be renewed next year; and the Clark County School District is holding some positions open in case budget cuts are needed. But the Legislature last month rejected a plan advanced by Republicans to take back a 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment for state workers and teachers.

Nobody tell state Sen. Bob Beers or conservative activist Chuck Muth or the Review-Journal editorial page about this, however. They’d all love to see Nevada’s government employees making minimum wage.

It was a good job for Dayton, probably even better than he could have expected after being ousted from then-Congressman Jim Gibbons’s office under a cloud of financial impropriety. And what an ironic turn of events it was in 2006 that Dayton would join Gibbons’s gubernatorial office as chief of staff, when the man who had replaced Dayton back in Washington D.C. and guided Gibbons to victory in what should have been a much tougher race, Robert Uithoven, was thrown to the wolves.

But now things are back to normal. Uithoven is advising Gibbons informally, and Dayton was finally tossed from the Sinking Ship Gibbons under cover of news about the one-day budget-cutting special session last month.  It was simply reported at the time that Dayton was to rejoin the private sector, signaling that perhaps Cornwall had finally won their long-fought power struggle. (After all, she got to stay in state government!)

Where did Dayton end up? Thanks to the “Inside Business” column in the Review-Journal, we now know: Back where he started, at McDonald Carano Wilson! Dayton will be vice president of government affairs, i.e. a lobbyist.

Wait. A lobbyist?! A refugee from the serially incompetent Gibbons administration is going to be hired to persuade lawmakers to do things? That seems very, very odd.

You may laugh, but lobbyists need credibility. In Carson City, among the corps of lobbyists, a word is a bond. Any perceived mendacity prevents you from making deals, and thus compromises your effectiveness. And did we mention that Dayton helped to helm the Gibbons administration, that was literally born in a lie? Or that Dayton personally fibbed fibbed to a Review-Journal columnist?

Frankly, we’re surprised. McDonald Carano Wilson is a respectable firm, home to a state senator (Terry Care, Democrat of Las Vegas) and a former United States attorney improperly fired by the politicized Bush administration in a scandal that’s still being investigated by Congress (Daniel Bogden). Plus, the firm already has a big-name lobbyist, ex-Clark County and University Medical Center advocate Dan Musgrove.

We just don’t get it. Why re-hire Dayton, after all that’s happened, in a position requiring trust and competence?

It happened in the very last paragraph of a story today in the Review-Journal, in which Reid finally decided to take on well-known Senate obstructionist Tom Coburn, R-Okla., (pictured in the story looking a lot like the Unabomber). Apparently, Coburn likes to block Senate bills for long, pointless debates.

But Reid is calling him out, bringing a package of 35 bills that have broad support in both parties to the floor, even if it means voting on Saturday or Sunday. Coburn is objecting, and looking for a way to stall the bills.

Ensign, of course, is taking Coburn’s side because, well, Ensign is a tool.

“Individual senators have rights, and to try to destroy some of the traditions of the Senate, I think is a dangerous precedent to be setting,” Ensign said.

Got that? Ensign is saying Reid is out to destroy Senate traditions, and creating dangerous precedents. Translating the Senate speak to English, it’s as if Ensign is calling Reid an A-hole.

Is Reid going to take that? From Ensign, a man whose greatest accomplishments in Washington have been on various athletic fields? A man who held up mortgage reform, even though Nevada leads the nation in home foreclosures? (Finally, he was out of town when the final bill was passed!) A man who leads Senate efforts to elect Republicans, but who has mostly whined about how getting his ass kicked slightly less hard than expected will constitute victory? A man who … well, you get the idea.

Anyway, we fully expect Reid to reply, although the senator has been very, very good about holding his fire on Ensign, whom he defeated in 1998 by a mere 428 votes. (Ensign later won the seat vacated by the retiring Richard Bryan in 2000.)

Anything, Sen. Reid? Anything to say to the man who’s accused you of destroying Senate traditions and setting dangerous precedents? Perhaps something along the lines of, “If Senator Ensign took the time to carefully consider things, he’d realize that his entire Senate career has been such a stain on the institution and humanity itself, the only real solution is to resign in abject disgrace immediately. Oh, and he can go fuck himself.”

Feel free to use it, Sen. Reid. You don’t even have to quote us.

What’s that? You don’t remember? Well, don’t feel badly: We at Various Things & Stuff totally forgot until the state Democratic Party brought it to our attention. Here’s a quick refresher:

Gibbons was newly elected to the Assembly when he told Delta — his employer — that he’d need six months unpaid leave to serve. But Delta told him to choose between his job and the Assembly, and when Gibbons chose the Assembly (he’s public-service minded, for sure!) he was fired by Delta for failing to show up for work.

As fate would have it, however, Gibbons had a chance to settle the score. We’ll let him explain, in passages from the Review-Journal profile (linked above):

“The Legislature was increasing the tax on jet fuel, and they put me in charge of the bill,” Gibbons said. “Delta sent a representative to lobby, and guess who they had to come talk to? Me.”Because of the way the airline had treated Gibbons, its lobbyist got nowhere with him. Within days, Gibbons got a call from Delta saying he’d been rehired. When he returned to work after the legislative session, the airline had a public-service leave policy.

“I couldn’t believe Delta would be so stubborn when it’s so important to have a good relationship with the government,” Gibbons said. “I think it was that lobbyist who went back and said, ‘This (leave policy) is silly, it could jeopardize our ability to survive.’”

Now that’s a touching story. You know what else it is? It’s a confession to extortion! And that’s not just us saying it: That’s former gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Bob Beers saying it! And even if it’s not extortion, it’s certainly an admission to using one’s position in government to secure an unwarranted benefit! Where have we heard that before?

To be fair, it could be that Gibbons was lying when he recounted the above story. He’s been known to do that from time to time. But given that Gibbons later denied he’d done anything improper (see link in previous paragraph) we’re given to suspect that the above did happen. And unlike the matter with Elko landgate, this does seem to be a violation of ethics laws, if only we could go back in time and apply today’s laws to Gibbons’s first recorded malfeasance in elected office.

Ah, the memories.

Nevada Democratic Party Executive Director Travis Brock, in a well-written brief filed with the state Ethics Commission, accuses Gibbons of a violation of NRS 281A.400 (1), which says this:

A public officer or employee shall not use his position in government to secure or grant unwarranted privileges, preferences, exemptions or advantages for himself, any business entity in which he has a significant pecuniary interest, or any person to whom he has a commitment in a private capacity to the interests of that person.

Gibbons, Brock alleges, pressured Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre into reducing the property tax bill on land the governor owns in Lamoille from $2,000 to slightly less than $40, first by appearing and asking personally for the land to be classified as “agricultural” rather than “residential.” After he was rebuffed, Gibbons hired lawyer (and Nevada Tax Commission member) John E. Marvel to represent him in the matter.

There are two issues here: One, did Gibbons use his position in government to secure a privilege? And two, was that privilege unwarranted? The answer to the first question, we submit, has to be no. Here’s why:

First, Gibbons didn’t “use” his position to do anything. The state Supreme Court ruled in a similar case in which Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was accused of using his position in government to benefit his son, by hosting a cocktail party at which his son’s new software product was touted. The commission in late 2004 found he did violate the law. But Goodman appealed to District Court, which overturned the finding, which spurred the Ethics Commission to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

And in the 1997 case of Nevada State Commission on Ethics v. Oscar B. Goodman, the court held that Goodman did not violate the law, because he didn’t “use” his position in government to do anything.

The court did cite several examples from the Ethics Commission’s own files of cases in which public officials did use their positions in government to secure privileges: One person used a government agency’s credit card for personal purchases; another used her position to hire a job candidate so another position would be available for her husband; one used his position to compel a company to pay money to a non-profit corporation; and yet another diverted business from a state agency to a private company.

Notice anything there? In each case, the public official used the power or procedures of a government agency to do something unethical. In the instant case, Gibbons did no such thing. He simply asked for a tax exemption to which (he claims) he thought he was entitled. He didn’t tell the Agriculture Department to tell the assessor the land was used for grazing. He didn’t have a state agency classify the land as agricultural to support his case. And he didn’t have the Tax Commission overrule the assessor, although he did hire one of its members in a private capacity to be his attorney.

Second, you may object that Gibbons’s person and title are so inexorably intertwined, a request from the governor for relief from taxes cannot help but, de facto, constitute the use of his position in government to secure an unwarranted privilege. Unfortunately, that argument fails in that Aguirre flatly refused the governor’s request for the tax exemption! Although he says he felt intimidated by the governor’s request, the intimidation was obviously not sufficient to get him to capitulate.

Moreover, if you were to argue that Jim Gibbons the person and Jim Gibbons the governor are inseparable for purposes of the ethics statute, you would be forced to argue that governors (and, presumably, other elected officials) must inevitably give up certain rights as citizens. Suppose the governor were to get a parking ticket while canoodling with a lady at the rodeo. (We know, that’s far-fetched; just work with us here.) And suppose the governor believed he was legally entitled to park there. If he were to show up at the traffic appeals window, and the clerk were to say he or she felt intimidated by the governor’s presence, that would, of necessity, constitute an ethics violation, wouldn’t it? But what if the governor was entitled to have the ticket voided? You cannot circumscribe his rights as a citizen simply because of his title. And he’s entitled to ask for a tax break, as we all are.

Third, Brock argues Gibbons improperly employed a subordinate to help him secure his unwarranted privilege. But Marvel is not “a subordinate.” He’s a member of the Tax Commission who was appointed by a former governor, Kenny Guinn. And as we learned from the recent flap over the state Medical Board, Gibbons cannot oust members of state boards at his whim. (Whether it was appropriate for the Tax Commission, which can set policy that assessors must follow, to intervene on Gibbons’s behalf is a separate matter, and Brock wisely complained against Marvel before the ethics commission as well.)

But even if you were to argue that Marvel was part and parcel of a conspiracy to pressure Aguirre to grant an unwarranted tax exemption, that argument still fails when you consider that Aguirre also turned Marvel down! He told the attorney that, while the entire spread of land in Lamoille may have qualified for an agricultural tax break, the tiny 40-acre portion that Gibbons purchased from disgraced former Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead, now standing on its own, did not. (Under the law, the property must generate at least $5,000 in annual revenue and produce half the feed necessary to support grazing in order to qualify for the tax break. More on this below.)

It was only after Marvel produced two checks totaling $5,700 that Aguirre finally relented, granting the exemption. He said he “felt like they [Gibbons and Marvel] backed me into a corner.” And, in fact, they did, by supplying him with the evidence — even questionable evidence — that the little parcel qualified for a tax break. Aguirre had no choice at that point but to either grant the exemption or call the governor a liar. (And Gibbons has done his fair share of lying, even about this matter, so you could have excused Aguirre had he gone that route. He didn’t.)

Therefore, based on the absence of evidence that Gibbons used his position in government, as defined by the Nevada Supreme Court in Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Goodman, it’s clear that the governor didn’t violate NRS 281A.400(2).

Now, as to the second question, whether the privilege was unwarranted. On this, it seems clear that the land in question cannot possibly qualify for a tax exemption as “agricultural” land. Others have examined this question in great detail — here, and again, here — so there’s no need for us to repeat what’s been so well explained elsewhere.

The fact that Gibbons was able to produce $5,700 in checks from Whitehead, ostensibly for grazing leases on the tiny plot, raises other questions. Why would Whitehead overpay so radically for the lease? Was this simply a sham to convince Aguirre that Gibbons qualified for the exemption, when he really didn’t? Did Gibbons return the money to Whitehead, or strike an agreement to do so at some future date? Could Whitehead have found a way to thwart campaign finance laws, by proffering unreported contributions? These questions bear further, and immediate, investigation by somebody with subpoena power and access to forensic accountants, because, on their face, they suggest possible wrongdoing.

But that would constitute criminal fraud, not a simple ethics violation. Of that, we believe, the governor is innocent. You’ll want to bookmark this page; you don’t see us forced to type those words too often. In fact, we’ve been among Gibbons harshest critics. If we truly thought a charge of ethics violations could be sustained, we’d be driving the bandwagon. But on this, we think, Gibbons stands wrongly accused.

And that’s before you even consider that he appointed several members to the commission, which has as its executive director a former Republican Party officeholder, and which has proved to be nearly toothless in finding violations in adverse cases. But that’s another Nevada story for another day…