Appeal seeks county phone records

Thursday, March 30, 2000 | 9:51 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Chief Justice Bob Rose, wondering why Clark County wants to keep its telephone records confidential, said the Nevada Supreme Court on at least three occasions released its phone records to reporters.

"We have had phone records asked for and delivered by the court," Rose said Wednesday. "We have made no exception. We give everything."

His statements came during oral arguments on an appeal by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is seeking cellular telephone records for two years for Clark County commissioners, the county manager and the airport manager. The county agreed to release some of the records but blotted out the last four digits of the telephone numbers called.

Donald Campbell, attorney for the newspaper, said the seven county commissioners were elected by the public and the public is paying the bill for the cell phones. Yet the public is being denied access to the record of telephone calls made and received.

The newspaper, he said, wants to look for government waste and to see which important people are calling county officials to wield influence.

But Clark County counsel Mary Ann Miller told the court there is a privilege not to disclose the calls because they may have been made in determining policy or talking about an issue. The newspaper, she said, was given itemized records on how many calls were incoming and outgoing, how long they took, their cost and if they were long distance or local.

After Rose made his statements about the Supreme Court disclosing its phone records, Miller said that came at a time when she had just moved to Nevada from Oregon.

"I was appalled," she said about the release of the records.

She said one call from the court was to a bordello but that anybody could have entered that office and used the telephone.

"That was not fair to the justice," she said.

Miller, citing a privacy issue involved in the protection of Clark County records, said citizens have a right to complain to those who govern without an invasion of privacy.

Campbell complained that the county, without any hearing or receiving any evidence that the calls should be private, decided on confidentiality. He said the newspaper was not asking for the content of the calls but merely the number.

He said government does not always tell the truth, and it's the job of the newspaper to verify what government says.

Miller said county commissioners look at the telephone records every month, estimating what they owe the county for their private calls, and then county employees go through the bills.