Editorial: Closed-door budget

Friday, Dec. 21, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons will be able to make budget cuts in secret, thanks to a perfunctory ruling Tuesday by Carson City District Judge Todd Russell.

Gibbons had asked state agencies to submit proposals to cut the budget, and the Reno Gazette-Journal asked for those proposals. After being refused, the newspaper sued and asked Russell to order Gibbons to turn over the proposals so they could be made public.

The question before Russell was whether the public has the right to see how the budget was being trimmed. The stated intent of Nevada law is that government documents are public unless there is some clear and legal reason to keep them secret.

The newspaper noted that there is nothing in state law declaring those documents secret and rightly pointed out that the public is poorly served by secrecy in government.

The attorney general's office, representing the Gibbons administration, argued that the governor has executive privilege and can keep the documents secret, and the judge agreed.

Russell reasoned that because the law allows the governor to keep budget documents secret before presenting his budget to the state Legislature, he should be able to keep his plans to cut the budget secret as well.

That doesn't stand to reason. The public has ample opportunity to participate as the Legislature shapes the budget proposed by the governor. Russell figured the public will have a chance to see the cuts when they go before the Board of Examiners, of which Gibbons is chairman, or the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee, but that could be months after Gibbons starts implementing cuts.

The bottom line is the public does not have the opportunity to watch when Gibbons carves the budget with his ax, and it should.

Russell's ruling flies in the face of open government and gives the Gibbons administration the power to continue its disgraceful practice of doing the public's business in secret.