Homeland security bill raises concerns of many

Erin Neff

Wednesday, April 2, 2003 | 9:22 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Local agencies, the press and civil libertarians said Tuesday that they were concerned that a broadly written homeland security measure reaches too far into local government's practices and would allow undue restrictions of the public's right to know.

Assembly Bill 441, sponsored by Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, would, among other things, allow the governor to close public access to many government records.

The bill allows the governor, by executive order, to make confidential most records whose release "would thereby create a substantial likelihood of compromising, jeopardizing or otherwise threatening the public health, safety or welfare."

Records covered under the bill include: documents related to information technology; building plans; maps or plans of building structures; logs revealing the location or movement of security personnel; drawing of alarm systems; handbooks of terrorism procedures; information about the location of pharmaceutical drugs; and documents revealing the whereabouts of governmental officials during emergencies.

Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, said the bill gives the governor too much authority to declare records confidential.

He said the press needs to scrutinize building plans to find, for example, cost overruns and mismanagement at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, or to determine whether a school has the proper safety systems and sprinklers.

"There must be a balance between security and the public's right to know," Lauer said.

After Perkins read the litany of items covered under the bill's confidentiality section, he said that while he wanted oversight of government, he also wanted to balance that need with the public's safety against terrorism.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, expressed concern that any reporting on the state's Information Technology system, which has been beset with problems, could be limited.

"It's so hard to refine some of this material," Buckley said. "The other concern is whether you can just instead count on the press not to do an expose on where the alarms are."

Assemblyman John Oceguera, D-North Las Vegas, referenced the reporting of troop movement in Iraq -- although without mentioning Geraldo Rivera -- in answering Buckley.

"Some of these building plans need to be confidential," Oceguera, a North Las Vegas fire captain, said. "Strategic plans need to be held confidential. When (terrorists) know our plan, what police and fire are going to do, they can go around those plans."

"Unfortunately the war against terrorism won't end anytime soon," Perkins, a deputy police chief in Henderson, said.

The bill also would create a Homeland Security Commission, would make felons out of many who use fake IDs and would require the placement of heart defibrillators in public buildings.

The automatic external defibrillator section requires the devices that can restart a stopped heart in each high school, large airports, state buildings and at the Thomas & Mack Center and the Lawlor Events Center in Reno.

The bill would appropriate $185,000 from the state general fund to the health division for the purchase and distribution of the defibrillators.

While the bill is designed to end duplication of services between the state and local law enforcement, several county sheriff officials testified against some of the requirements in the measure.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada joined Lauer in opposition to the section about records and stated the bill also defines terrorism too broadly.

The section about IDs would make it a category C felony to use false identification for any means other than to lie about an age. The exemption is designed to cover young adults who try to drink with fake IDs before they are 21.

The committee took no action on the bill, instead referring proposed amendments and concerns to Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas, who will work on the bill to try to create consensus.

A different measure, Assembly Bill 462, which was focused on limiting access to records related to homeland security, will not move forward.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, said whatever records provisions are written into AB441 will be the ones processed by the committee.