2 seeking to fill the late Sam Lieberman’s regent seat

A semi-retired educator and a physician are vying for the District 5 seat on Nevada’s higher education board.

The candidates — Patrick Boylan and Dr. Nick “Doc” Spirtos — are running for the seat during the Nov. 3 general election. The district’s boundaries include parts of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.

Sam Lieberman was the incumbent and was planning to seek reelection, but died April 3 at age 58 while in office. Gov. Steve Sisolak appointed Lisa Levine in June to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term.

Regents govern Nevada’s public higher education system and its eight schools, including UNLV and UNR, Nevada State College, four community colleges and Desert Research Institute. Those schools serve more than 100,000 students.

Boylan served on the Nevada state Board of Education from 2002 to 2006 and was also previously a member of the Winchester Town Advisory Board. He ran for Congress in 2016, for Assembly in 2010 and Clark County School Board in 1998.

He said he’s a semi-retired educator who leads seminars and trainings on safety and emergency management. Boylan — who earned two master’s degrees from UNLV — was a community college computer instructor for 11 years.

Boylan said in early August that since he served on the Board of Education and is semi-retired now, he wants to help Nevada’s colleges and universities. “I think we are going to have a lot of issues, and the students are the ones that are going to suffer and I don’t want that to happen.”

Boylan said he has a lot of respect for Gov. Steve Sisolak, but disagrees with having “political cronies,” friends and donors appointed to public boards. “I’m all for being elected and doing what the people want.”

Spirtos, medical director at Women’s Cancer Center of Nevada, previously ran for the Board of Regents six years ago. He’s currently on the community engagement board for the UNLV School of Medicine and on University Medical Center’s advisory board.

Spirtos said one of his prime interests is strengthening UNLV’s medical school. He also said he has insight on what’s involved with recruiting and retaining top faculty members, and it goes beyond providing a good salary.

COVID-19 response

The university system faces a total of $137.8 million in state budget cuts spurred by COVID-19. Seeing such drastic cuts “kind of hurts me,” Boylan said.

He said he’s “totally against” the temporary student surcharge the board approved in April, noting it’s tough enough for students to pay for college and some can’t afford extra fees.

He said he also doesn’t like the idea of layoffs or cutting programs, noting there could be other ways to bring money in, such as tax increases for industries such as mining, gaming and marijuana. But he said he understands it’s a difficult time for the gaming industry right now.

Boylan said he doesn’t want Nevada to be the state that gets hit hardest during a recession. There needs to be more research at universities in order to bring a better business base to the state, beyond just gaming, he said.

Spirtos said in early August he doesn’t have access to a detailed NSHE budget. “I believe you need to be down in the weeds.”

In order to handle budget cuts, he said he would look for ways to reduce duplication in services and classes. But Spirtos said he’d be adamant about “protecting those less fortunate than we are,” saying he’s a first-generation American who had the opportunity to obtain higher education.

If one college or university’s strength is in a particular academic area, “why duplicate that at another college?” he said.

Spirtos also said: “What’s wrong with having the best professor we can afford?” and utilizing online classes, which would maybe allow for consolidating classes. He said he acknowledges, though, that some jobs would be lost with consolidation.

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.