Judge rules previous cuts plan should remain secret

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Jim Gibbons won a court ruling Tuesday enabling him to keep secret the details of proposed 5 percent and 8 percent budget cut plans by various state agencies -- proposals that are history now that he has settled on a third plan for lower cuts.

Carson City District Judge Todd Russell rejected a bid by the Reno Gazette-Journal to force the Republican governor to disclose the plans that were replaced last week with the across-the-board 4.5 percent cuts.

The newspaper, whose document request was backed by three top Democratic legislators, hasn't decided whether to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.

Despite Gibbons' statement on Friday that the earlier cutback plans have been replaced by the new 4.5 percent mandate, Russell held that the governor is "still in the process of making decisions" and the initial budget-slashing plans are part of that process.

Russell also said he understands that the 4.5 percent cutback plans will go through a public review at meetings of the state Board of Examiners, chaired by Gibbons, and by the lawmakers' Interim Finance Committee, which ensures an opportunity for public comment.

However, it's not clear yet whether the budget-reduction proposals will have to be reviewed by those panels before they're implemented by government agencies in efforts to deal with a projected $440 million budget shortfall.

The judge also said that not disclosing details of the earlier 5 percent and 8 percent cut plans is essential to ensuring a private and "frank exchange" between the governor and his top aides in concluding work on actual reductions.

Attorney Scott Glogovac argued that the public needs to know what's in the plans that Gibbons had considered, and that underlying the entire debate there's "a strong presumption that government is open." He said the governor didn't meet his legal burden for not disclosing the documents.

Assistant Attorney General Randy Munn, representing Gibbons, countered that the governor can claim executive privilege as a basis for keeping the documents secret. He added an order to turn over the documents would violate the separation-of-powers doctrine that applies to the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government.

The 4.5 percent budget- reduction plan announced Friday helps the state's human services programs and its university and college system, which were hard hit by the earlier plans. But the new plan now includes prisons and K-12 public schools, which had been exempt.

For the state's Health and Human Services Department, which had faced cuts totaling $140 million, the new figure is about $78 million. For the university-college system, the reduction drops from nearly $103 million to slightly less than $58 million.

But the K-12 public schools now must deal with about $95 million in reduced state funding during the current two-year budget cycle, which will conclude in mid-2009, and the state's crowded prisons have to cut spending by about $24 million.