The flag at the Douglas County Courthouse in Minden is at half staff in honor of President Carter.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
An ordinance to abolish the elected position of public administrator will be forthcoming after Douglas County commissioners voted 5-0 on Monday.
Because it requires a first and second reading, the ordinance will take at least until February before it becomes effective.
Newly elected commission vice chairman Mark Gardner was an early advocate for abolishing the position and either hiring or contracting with someone to do the work.
“I think we should abolish the position, so we can conduct proper oversight,” he said. When an individual comes forward there is not a lot of oversight by the public, and frankly we don’t know what we’re really hiring. We need a lot more control over how that office operates.”
New commissioner Nathan Tolbert said he was hesitant to eliminate the elected position, but acknowledged if they didn’t have anyone interested in the position in 45 days it might have to go another direction.
Newly elected Chairwoman Sharla Hales came out firmly in agreement with Gardner.
“We have known that there are concerns in the way the cases have been handled for years,” Hales said. “But what we had was some responsibility, but zero authority because it was an elected position. Even though you know there are problems, you can’t do anything about it but ask for a report and if you don’t get a report there isn’t anything you can do.”
Hales said that former Public Administrator Steve Walsh, who resigned in December, said that he resolved the cases that were lucrative and left the cases that are not lucrative.”
Commissioner Danny Tarkanian asked Assistant County Manager Wendy Lang what other counties do.
While the position is elected in seven of Nevada’s 17 counties, including Clark, it is ex officio to other elected officials in another seven, Lang said. In three counties it has been abolished altogether.
Commissioner Wes Rice expressed concern for Community Services Director Brook Adie who was approved to catch up on the work that had been piling up in the public administrator’s office.
Adie reassured commissioners that she would be far from alone in doing the work.
“We’ve got a history of good administration and not so good administration,” County Manager Jenifer Davidson said.
She told commissioners that an operational review of the office indicated that Walsh didn’t have the resources to be successful in the role.
“He declined the support,” she said. “We’ve got to take a team approach to solve this problem. We have the sufficient internal controls to ensure any team is going to be successful. History is the best indication what will happen going forward. Saddling one person with this is not recommended.”
Davidson said that she received Walsh’s resignation on Dec. 19, 2024, after she contacted him about presenting his third quarterly report for the year.
Walsh said the third quarter was going to be busy when he spoke to commissioners on Aug. 1, 2024.
“The third quarter is on fire, so to speak,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot of activity. The office is in a whirlwind right now, so I’m really happy about that. There’ll be several … cases closing and a lot of good coming out of the office in this third quarter.”
Elected in 2018, Walsh was an estate liquidator and professional executor. He was unopposed for re-election in 2022.
The public administrator is an elected office and is appointed by the courts to administer estates when a personal representative is unavailable or unwilling to serve as the administrator of an estate.
There was no one elected to the office of Douglas County public administrator for 60 years from 1914 to 1974.
