EDITORIAL: Clark County’s shameless cover-up

Secrecy has turned one major scandal in Clark County government into two.

Last year, the Review-Journal’s Mary Hynes uncovered a significant conflict of interest involving a Clark County public works official. It concerned a $10 million construction management contract, which went to Diversified Consulting Services. That company had worked on its proposal with Rock Solid Project Solutions, which was going to rake in at least $1.5 million as a subcontractor. The owner of that company was Raquel Floyd. She was the wife of Jimmy Floyd. And he oversaw the bidding process as the head of the county’s construction management division.

In short, the man in charge of spending taxpayers’ money gave a contract to a company that was connected to his wife.

The spouses of government employees shouldn’t be completely excluded from government work. But you don’t trust that decision to someone who stands to gain a personal windfall from it. That’s one of the most basic safeguards one could put in place.

The Review-Journal obtained an anonymous complaint that was sent to county officials. It alleged that the way the contract was written gave an edge to Rock Solid. That was backed up by multiple sources.

Then-County Commission Chairman Tick Segerblom and a county spokeswoman initially refused to comment. They claimed it was a personnel matter. Remember that.

Ms. Hynes kept pushing and eventually obtained a statement from county spokeswoman Jennifer Cooper. Ms. Cooper said the county had been investigating what happened since it received the anonymous complaint.

After two internal investigations, Clark County fired Mr. Floyd in August. The county has also taken steps to avoid future conflicts.

This should have been the time for the county to clean up this stain. Instead, it was the start of a second scandal.

The Review-Journal asked to see the findings of the investigations that led to Mr. Floyd’s dismissal. It would help answer some important questions.

Were other people disciplined? Were any existing policies broken? Did investigators find any similar instances of this happening? Were there any red flags that were ignored or overlooked?

These are questions that the public — the taxpayers, who fund the county — deserve answers to. But the county has refused to release its findings. Instead, it has spent months fighting the Review-Journal’s attempts to obtain this information.

The county claims it can withhold these documents because they are personnel records. Some personnel records are indeed personal. The public shouldn’t have access to every county employee’s Social Security number. But records directly resulting from a scandal involving millions of taxpayer dollars are entirely different.

Those records involve personnel matters to an extent, but to claim they must be shielded from the public’s prying eyes is preposterous. If anything involving a wayward employee can be classified as a confidential personnel records, the government could hide almost anything.

What the county is doing flies in the face of Nevada’s Public Records Act. Its purpose “is to foster democratic principles by providing members of the public with prompt access” to public documents. Further, “the provisions of this chapter must be construed liberally to carry out this important purpose,” Nevada’s Public Records Act states.

Unfortunately, the law doesn’t enforce itself. When a government agency refuses to abide by the statute, a lawsuit is usually necessary to compel it to comply. That process is long and expensive.

The Legislature needs to put greater teeth into the law. One option would be requiring government agencies that improperly withhold records to pay treble attorneys’ fees.

Until Nevada’s Public Records Act has stronger teeth, the cover-ups will continue.