Let’s put teeth into open meeting law

You: "Officer, yes, I ran the stop sign, but it was not willful."

Cop: "Oh, well in that case, please proceed. The law only applies to those who willfully break it. No fines for you."

Assembly Bill 59 was intended to finally put some teeth in the state's open meeting law by assessing a fine on those who repeatedly violate it, and there are plenty of candidates for that dishonor.

But as soon as the bill landed in the lap of lawmakers the whining began.

The language that drew the most complaints stated, "Existing law makes each member of a public body who attends a meeting where action is taken in violation of the Open Meeting Law with knowledge of the fact that the meeting is in violation guilty of a misdemeanor. (NRS 241.040) Section 6 of this bill further makes each such member who attends such a meeting subject to a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed $500 regardless of knowledge of the violation."

The bill was drafted by a task force of officials in the attorney general's office, the ACLU, an assortment of journalists and others. But in the face of a phalanx of lobbyists and legislators, Assistant Attorney General Keith Munro, who presented the bill, immediately backpedaled, calling the inclusion of language allowing fines in cases where there is no finding of willfulness a "drafting error" and saying he'd propose an amendment removing that verbiage.

There were several members on that task force who strongly argued that fining only those who "willfully" violated the open meeting law would require the mind-reading powers of a Kreskin and make a mockery of the concept that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

But the amendment surely will pass. In fact, Assembly Government Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick hinted even more watering down of the bill could be expected.

As if that weren't bad enough, the bill also adds an exemption to the open meeting law for public bodies when they are "engaged in proceedings that are judicial or quasi-judicial in nature," without offering a definition of exactly what that is.

Fortunately, an amendment has been proposed to fix this flaw.

The purpose of the open meeting law is spelled out in its preamble: "In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that all public bodies exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly."

Let's hope the law will survive this tinkering with that concept intact and we won't spend the next decade second-guessing, doing rhetorical back flips and watching quasi-judicial mind-reading acts.