The state Public Works Board has screwed up so badly, so often in recent years that lawmakers are losing track of all the construction delays, cost overruns, contractor lawsuits and oversight failures.

Just last year, an arbitrator ordered taxpayers to cough up $10.3 million to settle litigation between the Public Works Board and the builders of the Southern Nevada Veteran's home in Boulder City, about $4 million of which covered attorneys fees. The home, a single-story stucco structure, only cost $14 million.

And in 2004, the state paid $2 million to end a dispute with the builders of UNLV's $41 million Lied Library. Like the veteran's home, it opened a year late and significantly over budget.

The board is supposed to serve as a taxpayer watchdog, screening contractors, verifying plans and sniffing out potential defects as projects progress. But on these two projects, the board bungled nearly every one of its responsibilities, putting problematic plans out to bid and failing to adequately evaluate bidders and control change orders.

These shortcomings are particularly egregious considering the board routinely imposes a 4 percent "inspection" surcharge on all state construction projects, yet can't account for the hours of work that supposedly justify its inflated billings. University system Chancellor Jim Rogers was furious when he learned two years ago that the Public Works Board added $600,000 in "supervision" costs to the construction of the $17.5 million Boyd Law School at UNLV.

Now a couple of proposals are before the Legislature to deal with the board's deficiencies. But they don't recommend oversight reforms or more accountability. Instead, they seek to throw more money at the board -- to hire more lawyers.

New Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto wants $200,000 to hire a deputy with expertise in construction law to work directly with the Public Works Board on its legal problems. Easily topping that, the board itself wants $4.6 million to hire outside counsel to defend its mistakes.

Thankfully, lawmakers appear to be repulsed by the board's request. Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, says she was "dumbfounded." Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, has called the request "indefensible."

Even Ms. Cortez Masto's more modest request represents the wrong approach. All the lawyers in the world can't make the Public Works Board whole, not as long as the agency's employees are allowed to inflate state construction costs by simply carrying clipboards around work sites. And especially not when the presence of these bureaucrats does nothing to maintain projects' quality or keep them on time.

For starters, the Legislature could reconstitute the agency's seven-member board of directors, which oversees hundreds of millions of dollars worth of state construction each year, to mirror the state Transportation Board. Among the Transportation Board's members are four constitutional officers: the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and controller. Having elected officials at the top of the food chain provides the public with a measure of accountability on highway projects.

Then lawmakers could hand most building "supervision" responsibilities to the same folks entrusted with policing private-sector projects: county and municipal code inspectors. They don't charge 4 percent on the gross for their work.

Lawyers have profited enough from the Public Works Board's incompetence. Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay them more.