Guinn irked by Gibbons' budget line

BYLINE: Molly Ball

REVIEW-JOURNAL

CARSON CITY - Former Gov. Kenny Guinn came forward Friday to object to recent comments by Gov. Jim Gibbons implying that Guinn prevented Gibbons from working on the budget before Gibbons took office. 

"He's definitely having problems with his short-term memory," Guinn told the Review-Journal. "He had access to everything. There's never enough time to do the budget, and there are always going to be things that you want to change later on, but it's not someone else's fault, and he shouldn't insinuate that."

Gibbons talked in an interview Thursday of oversights in the budget he submitted that might not have occurred if he had been given access to the budget in November.

"Could we have done a better job if we had had access in November to the budget? Yes," was Gibbons' explanation for problems in the budget that he submitted to the Legislature on Jan. 22.

But Guinn said it's well documented that he met with Gibbons and his staff in November and December to go over the budget.

According to multiple media accounts, Guinn met with both Gibbons and his election opponent, state Sen. Dina Titus, before the election to discuss the budget. Guinn also met with Gibbons individually soon after Gibbons' election victory on Nov. 7, and Guinn and his top staffers met with Gibbons and his staff on Dec. 11.

"That was an hour-plus meeting. We went over everything. We said, 'We have voluminous backup materials if you're interested,'" Guinn recalled Friday.

After the meeting, Gibbons told reporters that he was eager to understand the ins and outs of the budget. He said his goal was "fully understanding it because we will end up defending the budget before the Legislature," the Nevada Appeal newspaper reported.

Gibbons also said at the time that he planned no "big changes" to Guinn's budget, only to leave "small fingerprints."

Gibbons spokesman Brent Boynton said Friday that there wasn't a conflict between Guinn's and Gibbons' versions of events.

"This is almost much ado about nothing," he said. "It's a matter of the difference between a two-page rough overview and three large binders."

Asked whether Gibbons ever asked for the full budget documentation, Boynton said, "I don't know if he asked for the full budget."

Gibbons' recent comments about not having access to the budget, he said, had been misconstrued. "That was not intended to cast Governor Guinn in an unfavorable light, just to express the difficulties of the transition," he said.

But Guinn said Friday that Gibbons' comment was a clear misstatement of the facts.

"No one was holding back about any information," he said. "If anything, we were trying to push that information on people. ... I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I'm not going to sit back and let it sound like the problem was that I wouldn't share information. I worked very hard on that budget, and it's just not the case."