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Here’s a summary of Nevada Press Association testimony during the Feb. 9-13 week of the Nevada Legislature:
SB104 — It makes some changes in political advertising, primarily to exclude clothing and inexpensive items such as pencils and candy from a requirement to have “paid for by” language on them.
I didn’t testify, because it seemed like a practical consideration. The required language just doesn’t fit on that stuff. It clearly states that the language still must appear on newspaper advertising.
SB61 — I’m not sure I understood the testimony on this bill from the Treasurer’s Office. I made a brief appearance saying as much.
It would allow the treasurer to charge 50 cents — raised to $1.50 by an amendment — for records of unclaimed property provided to “a person other than the owner of the property.”
Ordinarily, I would oppose any fee increase. But all this information is free, published in newspapers across the state and available on the treasurer’s website. The purpose of the bill, as I understood it, was to charge so-called ‘air filers’ a fee to provide information in bulk. These companies collect names of people with unclaimed property, then offer to recover it for a percentage.
The part of the testimony I didn’t understand was that once the ‘air filers’ gather the information, it’s removed from the Treasurer’s Office public database. I still don’t get why that happens.
SB33 — University Medical Center in Las Vegas wants to be exempt from the public meeting law. This bill would exempt all public hospital boards under very broad circumstances, and I opposed it on those grounds.
The wording in the bill is awkward, and committee members had plenty of questions before I got to the witness table. It just isn’t clear how it would work.
What is clear is that it would open the door wide to abuse by public bodies.
SB3 — It requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to create a registry with names of people to be contacted when there’s been an accident.
The registry is voluntarily and a good idea. When someone’s killed or unconscious from an accident, who should police call?
The list would be confidential, as it should be. I didn’t testify — it’s just an example of a bill I’ll keep an eye on to make sure it doesn’t expand to something other than proposed.
SB57 — A troubling bill, the Department of Corrections wants to keep all information confidential that “pertains to an offender.”
Again, it’s far too broad. Worse, it goes against the fundamental principle of Nevada’s open-records law in that it would declare all information confidential and then allow DOC to designate what’s open.
Currently, DOC only opens a half-dozen pieces of information about prisoners in its regulations concerning the media. It was not clear exactly why DOC wants to close all its records, other than that it is annoyed by the number of public records requests made by prisoners and made by the media about its most famous prisoner, OJ Simpson.
AB49 — This is a sweeping measure from the Attorney General’s Office mainly concerned with sex trafficking. It includes ‘intimate images,’ also known as revenge porn — where somebody posts a dirty picture of somebody, or threatens to, on the internet with the intent of extorting them.
It makes clear this doesn’t apply to pictures taken in public places or for commercial use. I’ll just watch it to make sure it doesn’t change.
Speaking of the attorney general, a half-dozen reporters met with Adam Laxalt on Friday morning for coffee. It wasn’t a press conference, but it was on the record and allowed us all to chat a bit about issues, bills and find out the Las Vegas movers who brought his family’s stuff here had never driven in snow.
Reblogged this on Nevada State Personnel Watch.