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Dennis Myers at the Reno News-Review has followed up on the Associated Press request for legislator records by asking 62 Nevada lawmakers what they thought of the Assembly bill whisked through both houses on the last day of the session.
Eight replied. And while a few said it was worth taking a closer look, nobody seemed particularly upset.
The response, if I may generalize, was that they trusted their lawyers when they were told it was merely a housekeeping matter that codified existing law.
And Myers makes the point: This is the kind of rubber-stamp oversight that becomes possible when full-time staff is running the show instead of the part-time legislators.
Still, no one has an explanation for why this was an emergency measure. I can only speculate, and I’m willing to do so.
AB496 obviously predated AP’s request for records by several months. The amount of research that went into the Legislative Counsel Bureau’s exhaustive response seems unlikely to have been done merely in reaction to AP, which asked for a few simple emails and schedules.
I suspect the Legislature either has, or is anticipating, a major records request — something that would be tested in court.
The lawyers needed to bulk up their argument, so they got AB496 as an on-the-books defense of their rather tenuous legal theories.
We’ll see.