A fear of sunlight

     Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, continues to offer concessions on Assembly Bill 289, which is designed to clarify and expand the amount of information about government agencies and employees which must be made readily available to their employers, the public.
      This week, for example, public employee groups protested that a provision publicizing data about sexual harassment charges might actually discourage legitimate victims from coming forward.
      In reply, Mr. Lauer volunteered that he would support an amendment, making such information public only after such cases have been closed.
      The compromise carries its own dangers, since obstructive bureaucrats in other locales have been known to keep certain cases "open" indefinitely.
      But the point is that proponents of AB289 have been more than reasonable in attempting to accommodate every legitimate objection.
      In another example, police spokesmen have complained that making public rosters of all employees, including salaries, position descriptions, and records of hours work (as called for in AB289), might expose undercover agents to dangerous scrutiny.
      Assemblyman Pat Hickey, R-Reno, correctly responded this week that undercover officers are already protected by other statutes.
      Not to be put off, Las Vegas police officer (and lobbyist) Stan Olsen responded that all officers need protection from the insufferable revelations of AB289, since policemen constantly move in and out of undercover assignments.
      Hmm.
      Next weighs in Mark Balen, president of the Professional Firefighters of Nevada, insisting that compiling and releasing such a roster would expose the firemen to unfair abuse.
      "Because of the nature of their job," Mr. Balen explains, "firefighters might work 96 hours one week, 24 hours in the next week and none the following week. The press would have a heyday with that."
      But if such are the contract provisions to which our wise municipal leaders have agreed, upon the insistence of our hard-working civil servants, why the discomfort with allowing Joe and Jane Public to see the kind of work records -- and the need for extra personnel -- these contracts actually produce?
      More and more, it's clear the lobbyists for the public employees consider the inner machinations of government to be a kind of "secret empire" whose intricate workings can only be misunderstood and mucked up if the ignorant peasants of the press and public -- who don't even know the secret handshakes -- are allowed to go mucking about inside the sanctum sanctorum of the palace, without even wiping the mud off their boots.
      AB289 was developed by Secretary of State Dean Heller to update Nevada's 86-year-old public records law, which leaves huge areas of public records -- especially the electronic kind -- up to the "discretion" of the bureaucrats to release, or to hide.
      The kind of objections now being raised in Carson City make it clear how that "discretion" has too often been used.
      The lawmakers are elected by, and are supposed to represent, not the public employees who spend so much time perched on the backs of their chairs and alternately whispering and shrieking into their ears, but those of us who are subject to the tender ministrations of these bureaucrats, and who have not only a right to know what's going on, but a responsibility to become well-enough informed to cast knowledgable votes.
      The lawmakers -- and Mr. Heller -- should stick to their guns.