Thursday, March 20, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A public records bill, expected to rekindle the fight between open-record advocates and government employees, has surfaced in the Assembly Government Affairs Committee.
"This will be very controversial," said Deputy Secretary of State Dale Erquiaga, who headed an interim study committee to develop the bill.
Assembly Bill 289, introduced Wednesday by the committee, defines what is and what is not a public record since there's no definition in the law.
"Nine out of 10 times it's left to the bureaucrat who has custody of the record," to make the decision, Erquiaga said.
Similar bills were introduced in the 1993 and 1995 session but died when no agreement was reached. One point of contention is how much of the records of a government employee must be open to the public.
The bill allows evaluations and disciplinary actions against a worker to be confidential. Secretary of State Dean Heller has said he will propose that those items be open to public inspection.
The open records would include the name of the worker, the pay, the job held, the qualifications for the position, the place of employment, the hours worked by the individual and the date when the person was hired and when he or she left the agency.
The bill defines an arrest report by a police officer to be a public record. So would the contents of a 911 or other emergency telephone call and the contents of a communication between law enforcement officials broadcast over the public airways.
A follow-up investigative report would not be public, the bill states.
"The goal of the bill is to give government officials guidelines and to protect the public's right to know," Erquiaga said. "And you can get a record without going to court.
"The Legislature has been trying for 16 years ... there's been three interim studies and a dozen bills to define records and access. This is very controversial because of the vested interests."
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