EDITORIAL: Court ruling hits county over aversion to transparency

Avoiding embarrassment isn’t a valid exemption to the Nevada Public Records Act.

On Friday, District Judge Bita Yeager ruled that Clark County has been improperly withholding records connected to a construction management scandal. Last year, the Review-Journal’s Mary Hynes exposed a major conflict of interest involving a $10 million construction management contract. The county awarded the contract without interviewing most of the top-ranked groups. That was contrary to stated procedures. The contract went to a team that included a firm owned by the wife of Jimmy Floyd, the man who oversaw the bidding process. The wife’s company stood to collect $1.5 million on deal.

After the scandal broke, the county officials suspended Mr. Floyd and later fired him.

Undoubtedly, county officials wanted the whole affair to just go away. But when you’re spending — or misspending — taxpayer money, the public deserves to know the details. The Review-Journal requested records connected to the county’s investigation. These included emails, interviews and a summary of the probe. These records could provide answers to unresolved questions such as what Mr. Floyd’s supervisors knew and whether anyone else was disciplined.

The importance of transparency is this matter should be obvious. Among other things it would give the public confidence that county officials acted appropriately and fixed any systemic problems, instead of simply punishing the one person who got caught.

Finally, there’s the principle of the matter. The public has a right to access public records, as the Legislature explicitly stated while enacted the Nevada Public Records Act.

But county officials have long prioritized minimizing internal scandal over transparency. They refused to hand over many of the requested records. In March, the Review-Journal sued.

Among its defenses, the county argued that the Clark County Code protected certain records from disclosure.

But the county’s code “is not a state statute and does not furnish a basis for withholding the investigative records,” Judge Yeager wrote in her order. Further, “the wholesale withholding of the investigative records violated the NPRA, and they must be produced.”

This was predictable to anyone who’s read the statute in question. It states that providing the public “prompt access” to public documents fosters “democratic principles.” Any exemptions “must be construed narrowly.”

Clark County officials should stop wasting taxpayer money in hopes of finding a judge who will ignore the law. They should also re-examine the employment of those providing the commissioners and top administrators with poor legal advice. It’s well past time to quit stalling and release the records.