Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Open for debate

WEEKEND EDITION

April 23 - 24, 2005

CARSON CITY -- A long list of bills designed to throw light on government are making their way through the Legislature, sparking a debate on how open government should be.

Lawmakers are looking at bills that would change the open meeting act and the public records act, the so-called "sunshine" acts that give the public a right to attend meetings and see government documents.

While some officials are working to hold government more accountable, several groups are seeking bills to shut down access to certain public records, arguing that their constituents are in danger of identity theft.

The debates over open government are, many legislators say, a balancing act. It's an ironic one, since legislators have exempted themselves from state open meeting laws.

Still, Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, whose Government Affairs Committee heard almost a dozen bills dealing with the open meeting laws, said he thinks people will have more access to government under the bills his committee approved.

"I think for the first time since I've been hanging around here we opened meetings up more than we closed them down," Hardy said.

Much of the controversy this session stems from a series of open meeting violations by the Board of Regents that earned the board such a bad reputation that Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, followed the board around the state to ensure they were following open meeting laws.

Open meetings

There was obvious exasperation several weeks ago in the Senate Government Affairs Committee, which was looking at a number of bills regarding the open meeting law, most of which simply reinforced the existing laws.

"I think we owe it to the people of the state of Nevada to provide clear, specific, unmistakable guidelines," Hardy said.

Some committee members were troubled that they had to tighten the law. Hardy said he believes attorneys for the Board of Regents last year found ways around the current open meeting law.

For example, current state law prohibits public boards from discussing other elected officials behind closed doors.

Yet in 2003 the Regents met behind closed doors and talked about the public duties and community college employment of Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, who used to work for the Community College of Southern Nevada.

"It was quite clear what was already in the law but it was ignored," she told the Government Affairs Committee.

Giunchigliani sponsored a bill to spell out that rule and another that requires public boards to notify employees if they are the subject of a closed hearing.

The Attorney General's office had proposed other, more significant adjustments to the law, but the ideas were largely rejected.

Senators expressed concern about a plan to allow the Attorney General to subpoena information about alleged open meeting violations. They also challenged a proposal that would allow public officials to be fined if they consistently violate open meeting law.

Hardy said the committee shied away from that largely because they were concerned about the potential for abuse.

A bill sponsored by Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, is still alive in the Assembly and would impose fines on officials who violate the open meeting law two or more times within five years.

One of the most significant changes the Senate committee did approve was a measure to require meetings about top public officials, such as university presidents or city managers, to be open.

The committee stipulated that any health issues would be talked about behind closed doors to comply with federal law.

Cole Campbell, the dean of journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, said he thinks top government officials have a price to pay for their position -- openness.

Democracy doesn't work as well without constant public scrutiny, he said.

"Over the long term some will use the system to their advantage," he said. "That is not a good idea in a democracy."

In other words, he said, "the more government is done in secret, the more side deals will be cut."

That's the argument from Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, a former journalist who pushed to open meetings on top officials.

"I think you have an absolute right to observe your government at work," Care said.

James Dean Leavitt, one of the newest members of the Board of Regents and an advocate of opening more meetings, said most regents tell him progress has been made on the board after it adopted more regulations on open meetings in January.

The regents and the university system worked with the Attorney General's office on the new policy.

Closed meetings naturally make people suspicious, though, and aren't useful unless open discussion would violate federal privacy laws, Leavitt said.

"The problem with a closed session is what people think you're doing is always worse than what you're actually doing," he said.

Dan Klaich, the university system's vice chancellor of legal affairs, said the Board of Regents has implemented most of the proposed open meeting law changes.

But he said he wishes the Senate committee had required the Attorney General's office to define the difference between when a body can "consider" an issue versus when it "deliberates" on one.

For example, Klaich said, the Board of Regents could go into a closed hearing for a presentation on a personnel report. But the members could potentially violate state law if they ask follow-up questions, because it could be considered that they deliberated by asking questions.

"It's a strange deal," Klaich said. "It's a real trap for people, and it's a trap for good people. It's not as if people are out trying to figure out every way around the open meeting law."

That issue hasn't been addressed so far, though Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, expressed concern about it during a committee meeting.

"Let's make it clear that somebody doesn't have to sit there mute, not ask a question, not ask for clarification, not say, 'I didn't understand that,'th" Raggio said.

Townsend said the Board of Regents is already on its way to complying with the law because of the leadership of Chancellor Jim Rogers and Klaich.

The new guidelines, however, will help keep the board "on the straight and narrow," Townsend said.

"We understand they're running a billion dollar enterprise," said Townsend.

Along with that, he said, come "sensitive issues that might need a certain discretion."

Open records

A former Metro investigator had just sent the head of a violent drug gang to jail in 1997 when he heard the man arranged to have him killed.

Ken, who asked that only his first name be used, was the lead investigator in a joint federal investigation into the group.

Police caught the hired hit men, but only after Ken, his wife and their two daughters had to temporarily hide out in Southern California.

How did the gang members find his house? It took just a few clicks on the Clark County Assessor's Web site. Police caught a member of the gang with a printout from the county Web site that listed Ken's address.

The incident prompted the Las Vegas Police Protective Association to push a bill that would allow police officers and judges to remove their personal information from Assessor Web sites.

Assessor information has long been important to businesses and homeowners looking to compare the value of homes and see what their neighbors are paying on taxes, said Clark County Assessor Mark Schofield, who is neutral on the bill.

"If you couldn't tell what your neighbors were assessed at, how do you know that I'm doing my job or that they're being assessed at all?" Schofield asked.

But consumers still could type in an address and determine the size of the house, cost of the house and how much taxes were paid on it, said Dave Kalas, executive director of the police association.

They just wouldn't always know the name of the person who lives there.

Another bill still alive in the Legislature would protect lists of e-mail addresses that governments use to send out mass e-mailings, such as Clark County's monthly newsletter. Proponents said that spammers have abused government e-mail lists in other states.

And another bill would protect personal information about people who enroll in city recreational programs.

Several government representatives said they haven't had problems with government information being abused yet, but they are being proactive to protect their residents.

"Our job," Kalas said, "is to deter crime."

What would a city of Las Vegas employee do if a person walked into a recreational office and asked for names and addresses of people who take basic city recreational courses? wondered the city's lobbyist, Ted Olivas.

"The key is with this legislation it helps the front-line worker say, 'Time out. I can't give you that information without additional information,'th" Olivas said.

"All we're trying to protect is the personal identities and information," he said.

First Amendment

While identity theft is a hot topic, some of the proposed legislation has made First Amendment advocates nervous, especially the bill by the police union, which during one incarnation would have allowed anyone to exempt himself from assessor records.

When deciding what information to make public, governments need to look at the "theoretical harm versus the actual harm" of disclosing public information, argues JoNell Thomas, an attorney who has worked on First Amendment issues.

"Government officials are doing the work of the public, and the public needs to see and scrutinize what they're doing," said Thomas, who also serves as counsel to the Nevada Press Association.

Social Security numbers have been abused by people involved in identity theft, so disclosing those numbers in public documents has great potential to harm the public, she said.

Several bills in the Legislature would require government to better protect Social Security numbers. Thomas pointed out that assessor records have proven important in stories such as the discovery last year that former Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny was living in an extravagant house.

Kenny is under indictment on several government corruption charges, opening questions on how she afforded the home worth nearly $900,000.

"The public should have a right to know if elected officials are living beyond their means," Thomas said.

Kalas acknowledges that assessor records have long been open, and he said he favors open government.

But our forefathers didn't envision a society where people could jump on a computer and find out almost anything they want about a person, he said.

The recent murder of a Chicago federal judge's mother and husband has made police officers and judges even more nervous, he said.

"I don't think anybody could have dreamed that because of the advent of the Internet and technology that we could be able to get so intrusive into other people's lives," he said.

It's a start to make all people safer, though, argued Ken, the former Metro investigator. He moved away from his home in Las Vegas but still worries about retaliation from the gang.

"I'm a true believer that the information needs to stay confidential," he said.

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