Secret school budget plan

Citing "executive privilege" -- a phrase made popular by attorneys for Richard Nixon -- the Nevada attorney general's office late last week ruled Clark County School District officials did not violate the state's open meeting law when they refused to share information about proposed budget cuts prior to a Dec. 11 School Board meeting.

The Review-Journal sought the information so it could better explain to readers how the School Board planned to trim $120 million from its budget for the 2009-10 school year -- before the board met on the cutbacks.

The newspaper filed a complaint with the attorney general based on state law, which requires that any supporting material for a meeting agenda item that is provided to the members of an elected board must also be made available to anyone who asks for it.

The newspaper had repeatedly requested the information for five days prior to the meeting. The requested information was also printed in another publication on the same day as the meeting.

Superintendent Walt Rulffes and School Board Trustee Terri Janison told the Review-Journal that the budget information was shared with School Board members and senior administrators on Dec. 9, two days before the board's Dec. 11 meeting.

As a result of that sharing, under the law, it became a public record.

But the information was released to the public just a few hours before the board meeting -- not early enough for the Review-Journal to warn its readers what the board was up to.

The attorney general's office asked Mr. Rulffes why the information was not available to the public sooner. He responded that the information was "privileged."

Mr. Rulffes said the information was part of a private e-mail to staff that also included candid comments about possible pay cuts and further cuts "that he did not want to disclose yet," said George H. Taylor, the senior deputy attorney general.

But the Review-Journal had asked for budget information that was to be voted upon, which was included in Mr. Rulffes' private e-mail -- not details of the discussion surrounding it.

So thorough was this attorney general's office investigation that authorities didn't even bother to contact Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell, Review-Journal lawyer Mark Hinueber or reporter James Haug as part of the investigation.

The newspaper has not made a decision on whether to file a civil lawsuit against the school district. "We are reviewing our options," Mr. Hinueber said Tuesday.

Of course public officials will often prefer to keep controversial matters "close to the vest," discussing them in secret so the public can later be presented with a "fait accompli," a "done deal," when it's too late for voters and taxpayers to raise a ruckus or suggest alternative methods to balance budget -- such as taking a scythe to the accumulated paper-pushing bureaucracy.

That's why the public and the press have worked so long and hard to get the "default setting" reset to openness -- by law.

What the attorney general seems to have ruled is that it was OK for Mr. Rulffes and company to keep their budget plan secret till the last minute -- simply because "they did not want to disclose it yet."

If that's what the law means, why bother having laws that require open records and open meetings, at all?