DeStefano gets one response

Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 | 8:53 a.m.

Incumbent District 13 Regent Tom Kirkpatrick has been the only candidate in the six-person race to respond to challenger Mark DeStefano's campaign pledge to follow Nevada's open-meeting law.

Kirkpatrick refused to sign DeStefano's pledge.

"I am not going to quit beating my wife, because I do not beat my wife," Kirkpatrick said in the written statement. "I am not going to quit breaking Nevada's open-meeting laws, because I do not break Nevada's open-meeting laws."

Kirkpatrick has been criticized in his race as one of the seven regents to vote for the demotion of Community College of Southern Nevada President Ron Remington after a closed-door meeting last November, a meeting a district court judge ruled violated the open-meeting law.

Every one of Kirkpatrick's challengers have made following the open-meeting law a campaign issue, but only DeStefano sent out a formal pledge that he will follow the open-meeting law and challenged the other candidates to sign it.

In the pledge, DeStefano vows to actively work to change the way the Board of Regents works by refusing to participate in meetings that violate the Nevada's open-meeting law, terminating any meeting he believes to be in violation of the law and encouraging all members of the board to attend a training session on the open-meeting law.

The other candidates, James Dean Leavitt, Gloria Sturman, Jim Germain and Matthew Berkus, have also said in their campaign platforms that they will work to bring the board back in line with the open-meeting law.

Kirkpatrick, who has described himself in the past as a "lover of the sunshine" and a proponent of the open-meeting law, says in his response that he was always relying on legal advice.