CARSON CITY -- Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley told a legislative committee on Tuesday that the Tax Commission should hold closed meetings in taxpayer appeals only to consider legitimately confidential information.

Any deliberation and vote on such tax appeals should be conducted in public, while ensuring that proprietary information is not disclosed during those open discussions, she said.

Buckley, D-Las Vegas, was testifying in support of her measure, Assembly Bill 433, which would clarify when the Tax Commission can hold closed sessions in taxpayer appeals.

"The principle underlying this legislation is that the public is entitled to transparency in the workings of its government," she said.

The Assembly Taxation Committee took no immediate action on the measure.

Current practice is for the Tax Commission, at the request of a taxpayer, to hold closed sessions on such appeals. Deliberations and votes also are conducted in private.

A recently adopted Tax Commission regulation requires any private vote to be restated in the public session of a meeting. But no other details would be provided explaining the rationale for the decision to grant or deny an appeal. The regulation does call for an abstract of the decision to be released at a later date to give the public some insight into the decision.

The bill was supported by Barry Smith, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, because it clarifies that the commission should conduct as much of its business in the open as possible, he said. The measure would put more information "into the public realm," he said.

Joseph Turco, representing the ACLU of Nevada, also supported the bill, saying it was a well-crafted balance between two important competing interests, the right to open government and the right to privacy.

Carson City District Attorney Neil Rombardo, who formerly worked in the Nevada attorney general's office overseeing compliance with the state open meeting law, also supported the bill. He said the Tax Commission has ignored the advice of the attorney general's office in the past and continued to take testimony in taxpayer appeals in private, even when the information was easily obtainable in the public realm.

In one case, Rombardo said he found information from the Securities and Exchange Commission that was discussed in closed session in a taxpayer appeal case.

The question of whether the Tax Commission must follow the open meeting law is now before the Nevada Supreme Court. The attorney general's office filed an action against the commission because of a private vote in May 2005 to grant a $40 million tax refund to Southern California Edison for the operation of its Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin.

A Carson City District Court judge last year ruled in favor of the Tax Commission, saying a state confidentiality law governing proprietary information was an exemption to the state's open meeting law.

Thomas Wilson, a Reno lawyer representing the commission in the open meeting dispute, took issue with Rombardo's comments, saying the panel has "religiously" followed the attorney general's guidance on the open meeting law.

The suggestion that the commission is "some kind of run amok vigilante Tax Commission" that has not followed the law is seriously misleading, he said.

Wilson said the bill poses problems for the operation of the Tax Commission.

Right now, if a taxpayer requests a closed hearing it must be granted, and all testimony is private, he said. There needs to be a step in Buckley's proposed measure that would allow a taxpayer to explain why evidence should legitimately be presented in confidence, Wilson said.

"Right now the taxpayer has a unilateral right to close," he said.

Buckley said she believes the issue raised by Wilson is handled in the bill. "I think it has already been addressed but I welcome the opportunity to hear of any further specific concerns," she said.