EDITORIAL: Legislative deadline a win for open government

Congratulations! You were one of the biggest winners of the first big deadline for bill passage at the Nevada Legislature.

How, exactly? By retaining your ability to review government records, which are the work product of your tax dollars.

Legislation not declared exempt had to pass its committee of origin by Friday. Hundreds of bills died last week when they were rejected or ignored by lawmakers. Thankfully, among those fatalities were a handful of bills that would have greatly weakened public access to government documents and made it much easier for bureaucracies to avoid accountability.

Of course, that’s why officials at all levels of government consistently propose making their functions less and less transparent. Email messages, payroll records, memos, contracts, you name it — unless a document is declared confidential under state law, anyone can see it.

For elected and appointed officials more concerned with managing information and messaging, transparency is a problem. Many public officials bemoan the burdens of responding to requests for public information — they complain it’s too costly and time consuming, even though their agencies employ public information officers to, you know, provide public information. But transparency is an essential quality of a democracy. Governments do the people’s business. Openness provides a check against waste and corruption, and promotes integrity and efficiency.

Earlier this year, we named Senate Bill 28 the worst bill of the session. It would have allowed governments to charge exorbitant fees for public records by declaring ordinary requests extraordinary uses of personnel and resources. The motive behind the bill was clear: Make records requests so expensive that citizens stop filing them.

Media organizations have more resources than the typical taxpayer to acquire documents, but according to the Sunshine in Government Initiative, just 6 percent of public records requests come from the press. Fortunately, SB28 died.

So did SB356, which was written to nullify a Nevada Supreme Court ruling that allowed the disclosure of retired government workers’ pension records. The release of those records, which required years of litigation and revealed overly generous benefits, has helped reform-minded lawmakers make the case for major pension reforms. SB356 never got a hearing.

Senate Bill 57 would have made all Corrections Department records confidential. Blocking prisons from public scrutiny is a terrible idea that invites all kinds of abuses. This bill died, too.

Senate Bill 33, which allows the Clark County Commission and University Medical Center’s new governing board to close off more hospital meetings and records from public scrutiny, has been amended to allow only very limited exemptions. As originally drafted, the bill would have allowed any “strategic” planning to remain confidential.

“Legislators have done a good job of listening to our concerns about vague language and sweeping changes in bills about Nevada’s open-government statutes, although there are still attempts to chip away at the information available to the public,” said Barry Smith, executive director of the Nevada Press Association. “The supporters of these bills often argue they’re trying to cut costs. But in the long run, it’s public scrutiny that saves money.”

Exactly. Lawmakers struck another blow for open, ethical government when the Senate unanimously passed SB307, which bans lobbyist gifts to lawmakers and requires more frequent reporting of campaign contributions and expenses during election years.

Bravo, legislators. Let the sun shine in.