Jeff German: Regents given green light to circumvent open meeting law

Tuesday, May 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

THE NEVADA ATTORNEY general's office is in shock, and the public should be, too.

A Reno judge last week single-handedly undermined the state's open meeting law that forces public officials to be upfront about conducting their business.

Judge Janet Berry dismissed a year-old suit the attorney general filed against the Board of Regents for circulating a fax that sought to censure one of its own, outspoken and hard-to-deal-with Regent Nancy Price.

In so doing, Berry condoned the high-tech practices of the 11-member board that many believe are designed to circumvent the open meeting law.

"Certainly, we didn't envision this outcome," says Deputy Attorney General Bob Auer, who filed the suit. "This creates a huge loophole in the law. People can simply avert having an open meeting by arranging decisions through electronic means."

Auer's boss, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, says her office will appeal the decision.

"It's an important case," she says. "We need to look at an appeal."

Del Papa and Auer say the loophole -- which would appear to give any public body the right to poll its members behind closed doors through the use of telephones, faxes and e-mail -- also will have to be plugged at the 1997 Legislature.

In the meantime, some of your public officials, with cellular phones and laptop computers at their fingertips, are likely to have a field day shrouding their actions in secrecy. And there's little the public will be able to do about it.

As it turned out, the memo attacking Price was never made public because former Chairman James Eardley couldn't rustle up enough support for it. Some regents didn't believe it was a proper thing to do.

The maverick Price, who could not be reached for comment, meanwhile, remains a source of friction on the board, seeming to relish her role as self-appointed gadfly. Relations have deteriorated so badly that many of Price's colleagues now cringe at the thought of sitting through meetings with her.

Last month, new concerns about Price surfaced at a Reno board meeting.

In a twist of irony, there was talk that she might have violated the open meeting law.

At a closed-door session evaluating Chancellor Richard Jarvis, Price reportedly brought up the subject of the chancellor's wife, Mary Lou, who's also on the university's payroll.

After being told she risked violating the open meeting law by discussing someone not on the agenda, Price is said to have continued to bring up the subject.

Her persistence prompted some regents to privately accuse her of being a hypocrite.

Whether the regents move against Price, as the animosity rages, remains to be seen.

But now that Judge Berry has given them carte blanche to circumvent the open meeting law, anything is possible.

* He's still alive and showing signs of good health, friends.

Ex-mob hitman Frank Cullotta, playing out the sequel to the movie, "Dead Man Walking," was in town the other day.

A chipper Cullotta was spotted at a Las Vegas auto dealership on Fremont Street four days after his death was erroneously reported in the Review-Journal May 2.

The 57-year-old Cullotta -- who gave up his life of crime in 1982 and rolled over on his childhood chum, the late Chicago mobster Anthony Spilotro -- has been living under a federally issued new identity the past 14 years.

Insisting he has turned his life around, Cullotta telephoned me the day the story came out to poke fun at the false report of his death.

Cullotta was a key source for the movie and book, "Casino," which chronicled the mob's demise on the Strip.

* Word on the Strip is the Sands hotel-casino indeed plans to close it doors during its $1.5 billion expansion.

That could leave as many as 1,100 loyal Sands workers without jobs.

The shutdown, I'm told, may be just weeks away.

Sands owner Sheldon Adelson has not returned phone calls.

But the latest talk isn't being met with smiles at the Culinary Union, which represents about 700 of the workers.

Culinary Staff Director D. Taylor charges that the Sands appears bent on sentencing its employees to "economic capital punishment."

"This is the height of corporate irresponsibility," Taylor says of the way the Strip resort has kept workers in the dark.