Del Papa taking open meeting case to high court

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001 | 9:36 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa has filed notice she will appeal a District Court's ruling that denied a challenge claiming the university regents violated the state's open-meeting law.

Del Papa plans to take the appeal to the state Supreme Court, asking the court to reconsider the case in which regents discussed a raid at UNLV by campus police.

One regent says he's happy the case is going to the Supreme Court. "It gives us a chance to win a second time, and I don't think there is any doubt we are doing to," said Regent Doug Hill, whose comments sparked the suit by the attorney general's office.

Del Papa is contesting the Nov. 1 ruling by District Judge Bill Maddox who said the attorney general's office was off base in trying to apply the law to this case. He said the attorney general's office sought "to take the open-meeting law further than it has been taken in the past."

At a meeting in September 2000 in Las Vegas, a regents' committee discussed a confidential report by the state Division of Investigations on the conduct of UNLV in conducting the raid.

Hill of Sparks said some of the officers acted like "Keystone Kops" and he added, "On occasion they were acting like a bunch of cowboys." No names were discussed. He recommended another report be compiled without the names of the police officers and it be released to the public.

The suit by the attorney general's office said the agenda for the meeting did not state that the report would be discussed or that the board of regents would consider taking action on the issue, and the suit charged the action violated the law.

Norman Azevedo, chief deputy attorney general who handled the case, could not be reached for comment Monday on the appeal.

Hill praised Maddox's decision and added that Del Papa is "out grasping at straws on her legal theories." He said he supports the Open Meeting Law and agreed that she is trying to extend it further than it has ever been interpreted before.

Hill said the legal dispute is whether the regents stuck to the item listed on the agenda. The regents and Maddox agreed they did, he said.

Judge Maddox said the comments made by Hill and others at the meeting "were germane to the topic set forth in the posted agenda." He said Hill's statements pertained to how the report of the investigations division could be released to the public.

Hill said he expected the Supreme Court to reach a decision on that narrow issue and not get into a broader discussion whether restricting the regents may be a violation of freedom of speech.

The Nevada Supreme Court, Hill said, has never entered an injunction on an open meeting law case.

It will probably take more than a year to decide the case in the Supreme Court and Hill said, "Frankie Sue will be out of office when she loses this one."