Columnist Bill Hanlon: Legislators, state panels should work under open-meeting law

BILL HANLON is a school district administrator and a member of the State Board of Education. He can be reached on the Internet at [email protected]

IF CERTAIN MEMBERS of the Legislature get their way, Nevada will soon be nicknamed the Secret State instead of the Silver State. After last session's fiasco, there are very few in the state that would argue against the need for legislative reform.

Unfortunately, many of the state's legislative leaders view the call for reform as a means to streamline legislation, rather than actually reforming past practices.

Too much of the state's business is currently being done out of the public's sight. While legislators are not required to meet the requirements of the state's open-meeting law, they have at least put up a front to indicate they do business in the open. That facade is now gone.

Our elected representatives, besides working behind closed doors, can also sponsor legislation anonymously.

Legislators regularly exempt themselves from laws they pass for the rest of us. The last session was the most egregious. Many bills were introduced and passed during the waning days of the Legislature. This is after an emergency was declared and bills were passed without any public hearings. Many legislators found themselves voting on bills they had not read because the Legislative Council Bureau was not able to keep up with the onslaught.

It now appears a few legislators want to take the public out of public education.

Nevada's Educational Reform Act is touted as a public education accountability measure. Accountability means the public will be able to scrutinize the performance of public schools. I find this interesting because the very people shouting the loudest about accountability are the ones doing their damnedest to keep their actions from being scrutinized by the public.

A couple of sessions ago the Legislature passed an "unfunded mandate" statute, which requires a funding source to be identified before bills can be passed into law. When you read the state's educational reform act, you quickly see the authors of the bill exempted themselves from meeting the requirements of that statute. That's accountability?

While that may not seem bad enough, the bill also created the Legislative Council Bureau of Educational Accountability. The bill's authors extended confidentiality to this group. Section 41, Item 4 of Senate Bill 482 states: Except as otherwise provided by this subsection, any information obtained by the bureau pursuant to this section shall be deemed a work product that is confidential pursuant to NRS 218.625.

This bureau also hires outside consultants. My read on this is that the services provided by these consultants is also deemed a work product that is confidential.

Now add in a couple of upcoming bills that would move the Educational Technology Commission and the Council to Establish Academic Standards under the bureau's control. Those groups would then be exempted from the open- meeting law. It seems the people behind the state's educational accountability measure are somewhat hypocritical when it comes to public accountability of their own actions.

The erosion of the people's right to know and participate in government has to end. If the Nevada Legislature continues to act behind closed doors, the people will have no other choice but to govern by referendum.

Public education is just that -- public. An educational accountability act that cannot withstand public scrutiny is not worth having. Legislators should not be able to exempt their proposals from Nevada statutes, nor should they be able to hide from their own proposals. And most importantly, they should not be able to create bodies, under any name, that do not have to meet the requirements of Nevada's open-meeting law.

This is still the Silver State -- not the Secret State.

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