Whose records are they anyway?

After this past Sunday’s column in which I described testing the state public records law by walking in the county seat unannounced, asking to see copies of county labor union contracts, I got an e-mail from the Nevada Press Association’s Executive Director Barry Smith.

He remarked on the fact one of the first questions asked of me was: “And you’re with?”

I had replied that I was simply a citizen and pressed no further and received the documents I was seeking.

Smith reported that Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, a Clark County Democrat, experienced similar inquiries when she was doing research for Assembly Bill 442, which would prohibit state and local government entities spending money for lobbying another branch of government. (A good idea that is going nowhere this session. Why should one of your representatives spend your tax money to sway another of your representatives?)

Smith said Kirkpatrick testified recently that she called a long list of agencies, identifying herself only as a taxpayer, asking how much each entity spent lobbying. She said the most common first response was "Who are you and why do you need to know?"

I guess it is human nature to inquire — in my case an occupational prerequisite.

Many states have written into their public records law limits on inquiries. In Texas, for example, the law says the keeper of records “may not make an inquiry of a requestor except to establish proper identification.”

It also says “the governmental body may not inquire into the purpose for which information will be used.”

The information belongs to the citizen, not the governmental entity.