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The dispute between Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and Nevada higher education chancellor James Rogers is not an easy one in which to pick a side. It's sort of like Dracula Meets Frankenstein.

I was chatting with a long time capital observer and he said that despite the difficulty of getting along with either man, he still thinks there is a discernable difference between the two. "Rogers is a thinker. He is more than politics," he said. I understand what he means, and it's nice to see a mind at work in such a role. It's unfortunate it is not matched by some sense of the fitness of things and a little public relations ability, too.

Gibbons' attacks on Rogers and the Board of Regents may be crowd pleasers. The governor, apparently under the impression that the regents work for him, had told them to send him a 14 percent cut in the state's higher education operations. This is for the university's 2009-2011 budget, not its current operating budget.

After making some substantial cuts this year, the regents said "Enough!" and went back to work trying to build a normal budget. In what Regent James Dean Leavitt called "high stakes poker," the regents decided not to give Gibbons the cuts he wants. Instead, they adopted a budget increasing spending by 9.5 percent.

Governors don't like being crossed and this one is particularly scornful of those who disagree with him. But this little clash helps illustrate some little understood aspects of state government.

The federal government has a neat, clearly defined structure -- three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial. But state government is not that simple. The executive branch, for instance, is split into six divisions, each of them independent -- the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, and attorney general.

Then there's the Board of Regents. A Nevada Supreme Court ruling, King vs. Board of Regents, has made clear that the regents are independent of the executive and legislative branches.

After the regents defied him, Gibbons struck back by saying the regents' budget seeks the "moon" and suggested that they cut the salaries of some of their $100,000-plus employees. It was a glib response that played to the crowd, but it demonstrates the limit of Gibbons' knowledge of state government. I remember the legislative session in the 1970s when lawmakers had to repeal an old law that previously prevented the state from paying anyone a salary larger than that earned by the state's governor. The state was rapidly becoming non-competitive among the states because of that rule and was particularly unable to hire a head of the proposed medical school.

Gibbons' prescription of slashing high salaries would simply mean that Nevada would start losing talent to other universities, and would lose its medical school.

Plenty of critics harshly condemned the regents for not complying with Gibbons' demand for cuts, but the truth is that it's not their job to make those cuts. It's their job to advise the governor and legislature on what is needed to build the system.

Gibbons belongs to a faction of Republicans who believe that if it's listed in the yellow pages, government shouldn't be doing it, and he is intent on tearing down as much of government as he can while hard times make it politically palatable.

But the regents must function realistically, and part of the mission assigned to them by the law is to plan the higher education system's future. Gibbons may want to carve up the university system along with other parts of state government, but the Nevada Constitution requires that the state have a university and protects the regents from political pressure.

This recession is going to come to an end at some point, and how much the state must then invest in restarts, rebuilding and retraining will depend on how much is being torn down now. Rebuilding is always a lot more expensive than maintenance is. What the regents are working on, remember, is the 2009-2011 budget, not the current one. If the higher education system is to be dismantled, it's the legislature's decision, not the governor's.

In 1941, largely as a result of the political games of Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, Georgia's higher education system lost its accreditation. Talmadge, contemptuous of the system, discovered that it actually mattered to members of the public whether their colleges and universities were being protected. He was defeated for reelection.

Governors come and go, but the university endures and must be protected from the caprices of transitional figures.