Mendy Elliott, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff who was exiled to the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation after a staff shake up this summer, has announced her resignation from the job, sources confirm.

Stacey Woodbury, the governor’s current deputy chief of staff, said this in response to an e-mail query this morning:

Our office was notified this morning that Ms. Elliott has resigned from DETR.  Mendy resigned her position in the governor’s office in July, and went to work for DETR Director Larry Mosley.  The Governor’s office has not interfered with nor attempted to interfere with Ms. Elliott’s employment at DETR.  Whatever the reasons for her resignation, they are between Ms. Elliott and her employer.

That last bit is somewhat curious, inasmuch as we didn’t ask if the governor’s office had interfered with Elliott in her job. Maybe they just didn’t want us to jump to any conclusions.

Elliott has feuded with another Gibbons administration figure, Dianne Cornwall, who was the state’s “chief operating officer” before being reassigned as the head of the state Department of Business and Industry. Multiple sources confirmed to us recently that Cornwall is being considered by Gibbons for appointment to the state Gaming Commission when a seat becomes available next year.

After Gibbons named Robin Reedy, a former Business and Industry deputy under Cornwall, to be his chief of staff, some speculated that Cornwall was still pulling strings in the administration. That perception was heightened after Elliott’s son, Nick Vander Poel, was terminated from the state Energy Office in an incident that turned so ugly, sheriff’s deputies had to be called to escort him out.

Elliott was most famous in the Gibbons administration, however, for intervening in a Nevada OSHA case against the Boyd Gaming-owned Orleans, where two workers died and a third was critically injured after crawling into an underground pit filled with raw sewage and being overcome by the odor. The violations were negotiated down from more severe charges, a state worker and a Boyd Gaming official quit in protest and the federal government later called Elliott’s intervention unprecedented.