Our View: Let voters pick their leaders

We tell people over and over again their vote is not wasted. We encourage them to do their civic duty, that their vote counts and every other thing we can think of to get them to participate in the process.

Then something like this comes up.

No, not the Florida recount, but the Douglas County School District's determination Tuesday to fly in the face of the voters by using the taxpayers' money to fight the voters' will.

Douglas County's voters were perfectly aware they were voting for a teacher when they elected Randy Green.

There was no doubt, especially since board members- at more than one board meeting - threatened legal action if Green won.

The issue of whether a teacher can be a member of the board is another one entirely.

Under Nevada law, a member of any board of trustees shall not be financially interested in any contract made by the board of trustees of which he is a member.

Sounds pretty final doesn't it.

Yet Regent Howard Rosenberg, a University of Nevada, Reno professor, is serving on the board of regents. His employment contract was signed 29 years before.

In the February 1997 ethics commission ruling that allowed Rosenberg to take his seat on the board, commissioners said they believed that the law was intended to keep regents from using their posts to get lucrative construction or vendor contracts.

In Nevada, it is not unusual to find teachers or professors serving in the Nevada Legislature, where they would almost certainly have more control over their own salaries than at the school board. Teacher salaries may be worked out in negotiations between administrators and union leaders, but it is the Legislature that puts a cap on salaries in the budget every two years.

When Douglas County School Trustees, two of whom will not be back in January, voted to challenge Green's right to be a teacher, they also threatened to force him to pay court costs should he lose.

This news may force Green to resign his seat rather than take the chance that the lawsuit will go against him.

But who is going to reimburse the voters of Douglas County for the time they spent voting or researching candidates to pick the best one? Who is going to enfranchise the 9,745 voters who picked Randy Green over John Raker?

It sounds to us as though the voters of Douglas County want a change on their school board. Challenging Green's election may only prove the voters' point.