EDITORIAL: Nevada taxpayers paid for report on Democratic lawmaker, but won’t be allowed to see it

The bureaucracy’s reflexive preference for darkness and suppression over sunlight and scrutiny was on full display last week. That’s when lawyers representing the Nevada Legislature concluded that a report detailing the investigation into sexual harassment allegations against a Democratic lawmaker would remain secret.

That’s right, attorneys paid by taxpayers to render legal advice to the Legislature determined that the results of a probe into the behavior of an elected official would not be available for perusal by the very same taxpayers who will foot the expense of the inquiry.

And what could possibly explain the public’s swelling cynicism with our public institutions?

The matter concerns former state Sen. Mark Manendo of Las Vegas. Mr. Manendo resigned in July after the Senate Democratic Caucus announced that a two-month investigation found he had been involved in more than a dozen instances of sexual harassment during the 2017 session. He had been accused of similar behavior in 2003 and 2010.

A private law firm that earlier this year conducted the probe — initiated in April by Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford, a Las Vegas Democrat — billed the state at a range of $120 to $265 an hour.

Nevertheless, the Legislative Counsel Bureau, in response to media requests under the state’s public records law, ginned up a 37-page rationale citing eight reasons why taxpayers should be prevented from viewing the final report. The most amusing is the contention that the Legislature is not a “governmental entity” and therefore not subject to laws regarding public transparency.

“It’s a 37-page example of why people don’t — and shouldn’t — trust the government,” said Barry Smith, executive director of the Nevada Press Association. “The response is wrong on so many levels, it’s breathtaking.”

But hardly surprising. The LCB whitewashed a similar report involving Mr. Manendo in 2003. A publicly funded inquiry into a 2013 incident involving a North Las Vegas assemblyman was similarly stuffed into a locked drawer.

By denying access to the Manendo report, lawmakers and their serial enablers in the Legislative Counsel Bureau offer an arrogant one-finger salute to the concepts of government transparency. “Shut up and trust us” is a sorry excuse for a mission statement in a representative democracy, yet it too often seems the default position for Nevada’s insular political establishment.

The Manendo report — paid for by state taxpayers and detailing the behavior of an elected lawmaker — should be a public document available for inspection. To hold otherwise is to celebrate obfuscation and sophistry at the expense of accountability and common sense. Such a conclusion shouldn’t survive even the most casual judicial review.