NPA names six as 2019 First Amendment Champions

The Nevada Press Association’s highest legislative priority in 2019 was improving government compliance with the state’s Public Records Act. The vessel for our aspirations was Senate Bill 287. The final version of SB 287 established penalties for local governments and state agencies that willfully violate the law; limited their use of excessive fees to discourage records requests; and added provisions requiring government employees to communicate with requestors and help them find the records they seek.

SB 287 passed both chambers unanimously in the final hour of the session and was swiftly signed into law by the governor. So it’s only natural that on Saturday evening at our 95th annual convention in Ely, NPA honored as this year’s First Amendment Champions the individuals who played the largest role in the bill’s passage.

The honors begin with the Champion who was there at the beginning of the process. Tod Story started his work on SB 287 almost immediately after it became clear that the public records reform measure he supported in 2017 wasn’t going to pass. He helped to draft the language included in the original version of the legislation. He was a co-founder of the Right to Know Coalition, an ideologically diverse coalition that activated grassroots support for the bill. And as executive director of ACLU of Nevada, he led the organization to fight alongside the Nevada Press Association in a number of other pro-transparency battles in the 2019 session.

Senator David Parks (D-Clark 7) was the primary sponsor of SB 287. In his role as chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, he scheduled and facilitated the first hearing on the bill. When it bogged down in committee, he nurtured support for the legislation by asking Senators Melanie Scheible (D-Clark 9) and Ben Kieckhefer (R-Carson City, Washoe 16) to work with stakeholders and draft a compromise revision of the bill that could pass both chambers. Both Senators waded into the details of the legislation and worked diligently on a compromise. Perhaps most importantly, they resisted intense pressure from government lobbyists to water down their amendments. All three Senators were vital in getting the bill passed.

More than 1,100 bills were introduced in the 2019 session and with only four months to consider them it’s inevitable that many never made it to the finish line. Aside from broad public support, what often separates the winners from the losers is whether political leaders are willing to prioritize a particular bill. Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson (D-Clark 8) made sure SB 287 was a priority in the final days of the session. His active leadership kept the bill moving in the session’s final hours and ensured that public records reform had support in the Assembly.

Governor Steve Sisolak has long been an advocate for open government. His insistence on government transparency as a Clark County Commissioner in 2011, helped to expose extensive overtime fraud being committed by county firefighters. He maintained that resolve in his first year as governor. SB 287 would never have passed if he hadn’t conveyed his support to legislative leadership. Moreover, his April interview in the Review-Journal, in which he noted that government agencies leverage excessive fees and immunity from punishment to deny legitimate records requests, helped to bolster public support for the bill.