Open meeting law requires enforcing

We anticipate the Nevada Attorney General’s Office will receive open meeting law complaints related to last week’s school board meeting where a majority of trustees voted to fire their attorney and hire former candidate for governor, Joey Gilbert.

Whatever your feelings about that action, it wasn’t unexpected, because the new majority on the board has been pretty clearly on this trajectory since taking office in January.

Susan Jansen called after the final story went up on Friday to complain about our reporting that her selection as president was orchestrated via email. We have the conversations between her and new members David Burns and Katherine Dickerson, and they include text messages, too. We also know that a complaint was filed with the Attorney General’s Office over that meeting.

But it has become increasingly clear over time that the office, under both Republicans and Democrats, isn’t particularly interested in enforcing the law.

One example is an open meeting law complaint filed against the prior school board, when they decided to put critical race theory to rest. Filed on Dec. 28, 2021, that complaint claimed the agenda wasn’t posted at the required locations.

The R-C confirmed that complaint was filed and learned on Oct. 26, 2022, that it was not a violation. Two other complaints made earlier still had not been confirmed. We’ve pretty much given up tracking those two down as they are essentially moot.

In an effort to learn why the one complaint was unsubstantiated, The R-C filed a request for the dismissal letter that took until Feb. 7 of this year to arrive. The investigation consisted of circling the three locations the agenda was made available.

At that rate, the complaint made shortly after the first school board meeting of the year should be resolved sometime around Thanksgiving.

The issue here is that if the AG’s Office, which is charged with enforcing the law and has a handy form to fill out on its web site, takes nearly a year to investigate claims, then the only point in filing a complaint is to tell a reporter.

That makes it next to useless in holding public bodies accountable for conducting public business in public, something that’s difficult enough to do under the best of circumstances.