LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A new task force charged with making potential revisions to the state public records law held its first meeting on Thursday.
WATCH | Senior Political Reporter Steve Sebelius was there for the gathering and breaks down how their job affects all of us in some way:
The group was created by Assembly Bill 128, passed unanimously by the 2025 Legislature. The legislation came in lieu of a plan to appoint a public records ombudsman to adjudicate disputes over records.
But the bill did not provide the task force with funding or a staff. Boulder City offered to host the inaugural meeting at City Hall, and the attorney general's office offered to post meeting materials on the web, all at their own expense.
At the meeting, Las Vegas attorney Colleen McCarty was elected to serve as the group's chairwoman. McCarty, a former television investigative reporter, now represents media organizations, including KTNV Channel 13.
Vinson Guthreau, executive director of the Nevada Association of Counties, was elected vice chairman.
Under the law, the task force includes representatives of government agencies as well as media organizations and transparency advocates.
McCarty said the public depends on the work of reporters, who in turn rely on the state's public records laws to obtain information for stories.
"So if anyone in the general public reads the news, pays attention to what's happening in the news, many, many of the stories that are produced come from public records," McCarty said. "Without public records, you don't know how the police department is operating, how city and state governments are operating.
"Many of the big stories that you see nationally, locally all come from public records. So in order for journalists to be able to do their jobs and keep the public informed, access to public records is critical."
But the law isn't just for the use of journalists; any member of the public is entitled to see public records for any reason.
Advocates for transparency, however, say government too often puts barriers in the way of people seeking records, including costs to search for documents or redact information that is considered confidential by law. To be sure, the public records law contains scores of exceptions to openness.
But government representatives say that some requests are overly burdensome, and that they cost agencies time and resources to fulfill. They say some information collected by government should be kept confidential.
Battles over public records have gone to the state Supreme Court. The task force was created in part to see if clear rules about records could be hammered out by both sides to avoid such legal standoffs.
One disagreement arose during the first meeting.
McCarty suggested a policy that would not advance a recommendation to the Legislature unless it won support from a majority of both government representatives and transparency advocates. But two other attorneys on the panel said the law that created the task force specifies that a simple majority of members is all that's required to make a recommendation.
That discussion will continue at the board's next meeting, which was not immediately scheduled at Thursday's gathering.
"We're just trying to ensure that the things that go to the Legislature are supported by everybody. And, in my humble opinion, why wouldn't we want that?" McCarty said after the meeting.
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