Lawmakers vote for open records bill

CARSON CITY -- Authors, journalists and other citizens who want to access public records should have an easier time under a bill a Nevada Senate panel passed Friday -- unless they're trying to get records from the state's Gaming Control Board.

SB123 would establish timetables for public agencies to respond to records requests.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, a lawyer and former journalist who said he was motivated by government agencies who have ignored public records requests.

The amended bill gives government agencies five days to comply instead of two, and deleted sections that would cause the government to automatically waive confidentiality rights under certain circumstances.

The bill also allows for confidential government documents to be made public by a court order if those records are more than 30 years old.

Before passing the bill, the Republican-controlled Senate Government Affairs Committee adopted another amendment, over Care's objection, exempting documents controlled by the Control Board. Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said that without the exemption, he wouldn't support the bill.

"The Gaming Control Board investigations, unlike anything else, are without limitations" in their investigations, said Raggio. "Your life is like an open book. They go into so much stuff that isn't necessary for the public to ever know."

In objecting to the amendment, Care gave the example of the board's file on Howard Hughes, which he said would be of great interest to biographers and historians.

"Whatever reason there was to keep it under wraps or confidential sort of evaporates over time," said Care. "And I think the public has a real interest in people like Howard Hughes."

The committee also voted unanimously for SB325, a bill sponsored by Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, which would establish English as Nevada's official state language. The bill requires that all state proceedings and records be in English, but Beers agreed to delete part of the bill that would have required all state publications to be in English.

In heated testimony at previous hearings, some witnesses accused Beers of having a "racist intent" in pushing the bill.

Beers denied any such intention, and said that a majority of states have already passed some type of English-only law.