Reforms that actually would make a difference

By Jon Ralston

Friday, May 15, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

No one, many elected officials and lobbyists excepted, is against more openness in government.

And no one had been more critical of the legislative non-process than I over 20 years of covering the special-interest-drenched, faux-deliberative body that has too few bold leaders and too many hapless followers. But rarely have I have been as infuriated as I was this week to see the eleventh-hour stunt put on by some of my media colleagues to try to pressure lawmakers to be more transparent by importuning them to sign a vapid pledge that doesn’t even address what ails the system.

I know it’s hazardous to criticize your own fraternity, but I sally forth.

The Nevada Freedom of Information Coalition issued the pledge this week, complete with a news conference and a release with hyperbolic language any politician would envy. “We will call on legislators to put an end to the secrecy with which they currently are conducting business, so that the public will have an opportunity to discuss and debate the solutions they would implement,” wrote Thomas Mitchell, the president of the coalition and the editor of the Review-Journal.

This is not only untrue, but it is also the kind of fatuous mewling that should embarrass any journalist. As with any legislative body anywhere, small groups of leaders meet to hash out issues and go back to their caucuses, and then public hearings are held. No votes are taken in secret. The public has access to the hearings.

Is it practical or even salubrious to prevent small groups from meeting? Of course not. You think Thomas Jefferson and the gang ever had private meetings to hash out differences before they put pen to paper?

Good reporters have ferreted out details of the meetings — all it takes is hard work. A much more important issue is the tendency of so many of the caucus members to rubber-stamp what has been discussed, a commentary on the quality of those we elect because of what we pay them.

But, as members of the media, let’s not discuss that systemic problem. Let’s come up with a pledge!

And what a stirring manifesto: I pledge to “support policies and laws that will give the people of Nevada the ability to be fully informed about government so they can make intelligent decisions.”

Could it be more sophomoric?

Sure there is some good stuff in there about putting government contracts and expenditures online — some of which is being done — and to make floor votes and bill texts available online — which already is done.

But the pledge shows little understanding of what the process’s failings really are. And the timing is ludicrous — a week before lawmakers have (dare I use the word?) pledged to have a tax plan to The Man Formerly Known as Governor. Why now?

The pledge also would do nothing to stop what they are trying to stop: the so-called “secret meetings.” It is the typical impractical, counterproductive absolutism that is designed more to paralyze government than enhance its performance.

Of course there are reforms that would have a much more far-reaching effect than any hectoring pledge demand. To wit:

• Force every legislative secretary to have a log where lobbyists who visit lawmakers must sign in and list the bills they are addressing. Phone calls should also be logged; cell phone records should be regularly released.

• Every legislator’s calendar should be posted online.

• Lobbyists should not only be forced to disclose on separate documents every contact they have, but they also should be made to reveal the issue and who is paying them.

• Some of the finer reporters I know are covering this session. But it is the management of news organizations that fail to dedicate the proper resources to covering government that is much more a problem than any clandestine meetings. Pledge-seekers, heal thyselves.

• At some point, and I know this is a hard concept to embrace, the electorate needs to depend on the integrity of people they elect. You will never pass laws or create pledges to make dishonest folks honest, but vitriolic anti-government screeds do a lot more insidious damage to the system than a few lawmakers meeting privately.

The fault, my dear transparency-seekers, is not in the core groups, but in a system that cultivates a legislative underclass enslaved by lobbyists who know much more about any given issue than most of them and who advise their clients whom they should help reelect.

Instead of offering asinine pledges, how about pushing substantive reforms that might change something? This stunt shows the media acting more like the politicians, posturing for the cameras, whipping up the citizenry and enabling a corrupt system.