Bill to put teeth in Public Records Law debated in Carson City

CARSON CITY — Government representatives from across Nevada turned out Wednesday to oppose a bill that would put muscle behind state laws on public access to records with potential court-ordered penalties for violations and other provisions to spur timely compliance.

Senate Bill 287, spearheaded by a coalition that includes civil rights and good-government watchdogs, media organizations and elected officials, ran into considerable opposition from agencies who objected to potential penalties, higher costs and unmanageable workloads in responding to records requests. The Senate Government Affairs Committee heard three hours of testimony on the bill, which likely faces some tweaking.

SB287 would make changes to existing public records law by limiting fees agencies may charge for producing records; requiring digital records to be delivered in their original format instead of being printed; and requiring agencies to work with requesters to fulfill overly broad or otherwise unwieldy requests rather than deny them outright.

Besides citing potential added workloads and higher costs of processing requests, what drew the most ire from opponents were enforcement provisions of the bill that would allow a court to impose fines and penalties for an agency’s failure to comply. A judge could assess fines of $100 for each day an agency blocks access, require them to pay the requester’s attorney fees, and impose civil penalties starting at $1,000 and ranging up to $250,000.

Further, agencies would have to identify the person who fulfills or denies records requests. Those officers — rather than agencies themselves, drawing on public budgets — could be held personally liable for fines and penalties.

Much of the debate arose over seemingly misunderstood sections of the bill: for example, the penalty provisions, with opponents focusing on the possible sky-high fines rather than on the compliance the fines are intended to promote.

“I think there is a little misunderstanding there,” said Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, the committee chair who is carrying the bill, after the hearing. He said opposing sides were “going to see what they can do as far as coming together on the issue.”

Bill supporters noted that state open meetings laws found greater compliance after penalties were attached for violating them. Those changes did not produce the raft of negative outcomes predicted by opponents, such as increased litigation.

“We had a big parade of horribles today,” said Maggie McLetchie, a Las Vegas civil rights and open-government attorney and one of the bill’s presenters. “That never happened” when the open meeting laws were strengthened, she said.

“I think it’s ironic that in a room full of government-paid lobbyists, how many dollars the taxpayers just paid to have lobbyists come and argue against the public’s right to know,” she added.

McLetchie has represented the Review-Journal in records access lawsuits against a number of government entities, several of which testified in opposition to the bill Wednesday.

The Review-Journal has pending litigation for records from the Clark County School District, the Metropolitan Police Department, the city of Henderson and the Clark County coroner’s office. Several legal actions involve requests for records pertaining the Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting on Oct. 1, 2017.

Opponents said the bill did not adequately provide for good-faith efforts on the part of entities to comply, an assertion supporters disputed. Opponents also cited expensive records requests they had fulfilled, only to see the records never picked up, and objected that no provision was made in the bill for government agencies to win court-ordered fines or recoup attorney fees in the case of frivolous requests.

Under legislative rules, lawmakers have until April 12 to pass the bill out of the Government Affairs Committee to the full Senate for a vote.

Contact Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-0661. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.