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Now a judge knows what it’s like to try to pry records out of an uncooperative Nevada agency.
I should say another judge, as U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen isn’t the first to confront the problem. We saw it in several rulings on the Reno Gazette-Journal’s lawsuit to get access to Public Employee Retirement System information.
In this case, though, the judge wasn’t ruling on somebody else’s request for records. This was the discovery process in a lawsuit against University Medical Center, and Judge Leen sounded as exasperated as any reporter.
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal story:
“UMC is a public hospital. Public funds have been and continue to be expended on the defense of this case,” Leen wrote in her late March ruling. “UMC has paid in excess of $500,000 to the special master fund alone because of its failures to comply with its ESI discovery obligations. There is a strong presumption of public access to judicial files and records. I find the public has a right to know exactly why enormous sums have been spent at public expense.”
I hadn’t been aware of this case until I saw it in the newspaper.
But I can’t help but relate it to a bill, SB33, proposed by UMC to exempt it from a portion of Nevada’s open-meeting law.
The bill, as it’s been amended, would allow UMC’s board to meet in secret to discuss acquiring property or adding services.
Their argument is that UMC, which loses millions of tax dollars a year, is at a competitive disadvantage against private companies, who can find out UMC’s plan at a public meeting and do whatever they want to thwart it.
The argument against it, to echo Judge Leen, is that UMC has its own competitive advantage: It operates with tax dollars. It can continue to run at a deficit, and taxpayers pick up the tab.
The only requirement: It do so in public, so we know where the money is going.
Reblogged this on Nevada State Personnel Watch.