Editorial: On to the next job

Recent revelations concerning a former Las Vegas Valley Water District employee and an FBI criminal investigation should have UNLV officials rethinking their hiring procedures.

The Review-Journal’s Henry Brean reported last week that Jennifer McCain-Bray, who spent 14 years at the water district as a purchasing analyst, is the subject of a criminal probe involving the misuse of taxpayer funds. Water district officials said they contacted the FBI after learning of discrepancies and were in the process of firing Ms. McCain-Bray over the matter when she resigned last December.

The district maintains that Ms. McCain-Bray over a three-year period authorized thousands of ink-jet cartridge purchases at a cost of $4.5 million, which she then sold to a buyer in New Jersey in exchange for a cut of the money.

Ms. McCain-Bray, who earned a comfortable $97,880 a year at the district, deserves a presumption of innocence as the FBI probe plays out. But the fiasco raises questions about the water district’s internal controls. Let’s hope agency officials address the institutional missteps that allowed this to happen.

Some soul-searching is also in order over on Maryland Parkway. It seems that after Ms. McCain-Bray was bounced out the door at the water district, she landed on her feet at UNLV, securing a $50,000-a-year job in the school’s purchasing department. Yes, you read that correctly.

Did anybody at the university bother to check or verify Ms. McCain-Bray’s employment history or references? Seems as if just a modicum of due diligence would have alerted UNLV officials to a potential problem. Taxpayers deserve better.