Chancellor, attorney general meet

Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 | 11:15 a.m.

A private sit down Wednesday afternoon between the university system chancellor and the Nevada attorney general may have been what each entity needed to put an end to their conflict over the open-meeting law.

Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers said his one-on-one conversation with Attorney General Brian Sandoval "went very well" and that he thinks they'll be able to settle their differences at their upcoming meeting on Tuesday.

"We have a mechanism for getting all of our problems resolved," Rogers said.

Sandoval also said the 30-minute meeting in his Las Vegas office was productive.

"It was direct and to the point and we didn't mince any words," Sandoval said.

Both said they are still hammering out the details, but that two components in preventing further allegations of open-meeting law violations against the Board of Regents will be communication and openness.

Rogers said he plans to regularly communicate with the attorney general's office, and that he plans to make sure the entire University and Community College System of Nevada is as transparent as possible under his administration.

Sandoval said he wants to provide training to the Board of Regents and their legal team on the open-meeting law. Another mechanism that Sandoval said he wants to put in place is allowing regents to be able to call the attorney general's open-meeting law deputy, Neil Rombardo, directly with any questions they may have on the open-meeting law.

"Hopefully that will prevent any violations in the future," Sandoval said.

Both men said they only discussed the most recent allegation that the Board of Regents violated the open-meeting law in broad terms of how to stop future violations. They said they will be working on a resolution of the current allegation, that one of the system's attorneys violated the law when he refused to give out Rogers' employment contract to the public, over the next week.

"I'm hopeful that we will resolve it," Sandoval said, "But the resolution will not include a dismissal of the complaint.