Homeland security concerns may close public meetings

Jace Radke and Erin Neff

Thursday, Jan. 23, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.

The Legislature will be asked to consider changing the state's open-meeting laws to keep anti-terrorism information secret.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, has requested a homeland security bill for this legislative session -- a Nevada version of the USA Patriot Act.

The bill draft will contain a provision to limit the type of discussions currently conducted in public.

"The theory would be that much like on a national level, when it comes to those things dealing with homeland security, we are doing ourselves a disservice by showing the bad guys what our strategy is, either budgetarily, or strategically," Perkins said.

Local law enforcement and emergency officials charged with forming a countywide homeland security committee met Wednesday to discuss ways to provide more secrecy for homeland security issues.

Currently local entities discuss homeland security issues within the Local Emergency Planning Committee, a voluntary group of emergency managers and officials that is under the auspices of the Clark County Commission and is subject to open-meeting laws.

About 25 local officials, including Sheriff Bill Young and State Homeland Security Adviser Jerry Bussell, discussed the need to keep vulnerability assessments and other information private at a meeting at the Henderson Fire Training Center.

"I think each one of us believes in the open-meeting laws," Bussell said. "We don't want deals cut behind the door in a smoky room, but we also don't want to put our vulnerabilities out there."

Perkins said he is concerned because many law enforcement agencies, including his own, are subject to budgetary hearings before city councils or county commissions.

"If we are in an open meeting talking about whether to allocate $20,000 for a particular gas mask and the bad guys know that, they just go out and get another mask," Perkins said.

The local emergency planning committee, which is the point of contact for federal grant money for emergency planning and preparation in Clark County, has moved to create a homeland security subcommittee. The committee would be subject to the open-meeting law, and that's a concern, Henderson Emergency Manager Mike Cyphers said.

"Specifics about what kind of bomb robots or gas masks we have or vulnerability studies and assessments are things we don't want to risk," Cyphers said.

Jim Spinello, the county's assistant director of administrative services, said there is no way around open meeting laws, whether the homeland security committee was formed under the Local Emergency Planning Committee or as a separate entity.

County commissioners were expected to formalize the homeland security subcommittee Tuesday, but the item was delayed for 30 days to give emergency officials time to find alternatives.

Nevada Emergency Management Chief Frank Siracusa said the need for a homeland security committee for each of Nevada's 17 counties becomes more important as the new federal Homeland Security Department picks up steam.

"There needs to be a single agency that has the responsibility for the federal grants that are going to come down," Siracusa said. "There needs to be a single pass-through where I can send the checks."

Young cautioned that although there has been talk of more federal money for homeland security, it hasn't happened yet.

"We've got about $100,000 since 9-11, so it's not like there have been piles of money out there," Young said.

Young said he wanted to get legal opinions on open-meeting laws from the attorney general and Metro attorneys before committing to forming a homeland security committee. He added that intelligence information is already kept secret and would not be discussed within a committee.

"From our perspective intelligence gathering is what is going to prevent a terrorist attack," Young said. "Metro and the FBI work with classified information that I think only five people in this room are cleared to talk about."

Kent Lauer, head of the Nevada Press Association, hasn't seen Perkins' bill draft yet, but said that it could raise concerns.

"We recognize that genuine matters of security must be protected, but we're concerned about the potential of writing a bill to broadly and making things secret that aren't security matters," said Lauer, who has lobbied in past sessions to strengthen the open-meeting laws.

Perkins said a balance can be drawn between details the public needs to know and items that could put someone in harm's way.

"Maybe the total budget number is available, but the line items might not be," Perkins said. "We can give out the things that aren't going to give it away or get someone hurt."