Cost of obtaining public records jumps

Jeff Schweers

Monday, Jan. 5, 1998 | 10:39 a.m.

A new law that emerged from the public records reform debates of the 1997 Legiaslature has actually made transcripts of administrative hearings more expensive to obtain.

The so-called public records bill, Assembly Bill 214, was designed to improve public records laws and make documents cheaper and more accessible to the public by requiring government agencies to charge no more than the actual cost of producing copies.

An amendment, however, allows an agency to charge an additional fee for transcripts provided by a certified court reporter equal to the amount the agency agreed to pay the court reporter for copies of the transcript.

"What they can charge is the actual cost of providing a page of the transcript plus whatever fee the court reporter charges that governmental entity," said Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association.

"This is a compromise on language," said Lauer, whose organization pushed for the other public records reform. "We don't agree but we didn't oppose it to get the bill passed."

The original language would have required the public to obtain transcripts of hearings from the court reporter and not the governmental agency.

"We clearly opposed that," Lauer said. "That would give private entities exclusive control over copies of a public record."

But the state Ethics Commission has decided to do just that, by making arrangements for the public to get transcripts directly from the court reporter.

Deputy Attorney General Louis Ling, who handles legal matters for the Ethics Commission, said the commission staff created a new policy in response to the new law. Anyone who wants a transcript must notify the Ethics Commission secretary, who will then determine if the matter is public, then forward the request to the court reporter in Henderson, who will then make arrangements with the individual requesting the records to pick them up.

By doing that, Ling said, the public only pays the court reporter fees and not the Ethics Commission's.

"We don't have to charge that extra 10 cents a copy," Ling said.

The new law allows agencies to waive all or a portion of its copying costs.

"The law said the public shouldn't have to go to a private third party, so they're misinterpreting the law," Lauer said.

Harvey Whittemore, the lobbyist for the court reporters who got the language drafted protecting their work product, said he doesn't believe the Ethics Commission is misinterpreting the law.

"I think what they tried to do was come up with a system that was most flexible for getting transcripts," Whittemore said. "By saying if you can go directly to the court reporter and pay their copy price, then it would be less than paying their copy price and our administrative cost."