BY DENNIS MYERS
TRUMP CUTS INTERIOR BUDGET The budget of the federal department that Nevada and other intermountain states are normally most concerned about has been severely slashed. The cuts were announced March 11. They were so deep that news even made the Wall Street Journal: “The Interior Department would take a 14 percent cut under President Trump’s proposed budget, including nearly a third to an agency that manages water and power in the West. Under the president’s plan for the next fiscal year, Interior’s budget would fall to $12.6 billion from $14.6 billion approved last year. The National Park Service’s budget would fall 15 percent, while funds for the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees controversial irrigation projects in states like California, would drop 31 percent.” The Center for Western Priorities issued a statement: “The proposed budget includes major cuts to land and wildlife conservation programs housed in the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service and budget increases for oil, natural gas, and coal permitting and leasing. Notably, the budget would cut discretionary spending on the Land and Water Conservation Fund by more than 100 percent—not only zeroing out the program but trying to claw back funds Congress has already appropriated.”
The Nevada Legislature wrote a shield law for reporters in 1969 and 1975. But the job may not be finished yet.
LAWLESS SHERIFFS MAKE NEWS
PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
Two Nevada county sheriffs—Sharon Wehrley of Nye County and Jesse Watts of Eureka—refuse to enforce a new Nevada law. The law, passed in Senate Bill 143, will take effect on Jan. 2. In her letter to the governor, Wehrly quoted the seminal U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Marbury vs. Madison: “All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.” However, nothing in Marbury empowers public officials to disobey laws. It is courts, not elected officials, who decide whether laws are null and void. Meaning that determination is not DIY for Wehrly and Watts. The Second Amendment does not bar legislators from regulating gun ownership, and background checks have been upheld in other states. Wehrly further wrote, “History seems to be repeating itself in the United States; in Germany prior to WWII we saw Hitler place restrictions on the public’s right to bear arms, then we stood by and watched him seize the firearms from his citizens, placing them ‘under the protection of the state.”’ This is factually inaccurate. The Nazis in Germany were permissive on gun ownership. Before Hitler and the Nazi Party took power, Germany lived under laws enacted by the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic that required all citizens to turn in their guns to the government and, later, imposed tight registration requirements on gun ownership. Five years after Hitler came to power, Germany relaxed the restrictions, “completely deregulat[ing] the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” according to Columbia University Law School professor Bernard Harcourt, in a law review article he wrote in 2004. The age for gun ownership in Germany was lowered from 20 to 18, and many sectors of society were exempted from gun restrictions. Jews or groups critical of the Nazis were remained under the restrictions. Nevada elected officials can be removed for failing to perform their duties or for misconduct in office. In May 1927, for instance, Gov. Fred Balzar removed Treasurer Ed Malley and appointed George Russell to replace him when Malley’s bond was withdrawn after he was accused of responsibility for missing state funds. Nevada sheriffs—including two women—have been recalled from office, but we have not found any instance of removal. Wehrley further wrote, “Our staff is thin, our budgets are limited, and our responsibilities are laced with state mandated unfunded programs; we struggle to enforce the laws that exist. By signing this bill into law does nothing [sic] but make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to transfer ownership of weapons, place an additional burden on law enforcement, and encourages citizens to ‘turn in’ their family members, neighbors, friends and acquaintances.” However, a note by the legislature’s fiscal analysts found no fiscal impacts from the new law on local governments, only on state government.
—DENNIS MYERS
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Shield? Gilman lawsuit tests reporter protection Nevada District Judge James Wilson has ruled that the Nevada press shield law does not apply to online journalists. The ruling came in a lawsuit by brothel and industrial park owner Lance Gilman against TheStoreyTeller.online editor Sam Toll, who ran an article asserting that Gilman is not a resident of Storey County and thus is ineligible to serve as a county commissioner. Gilman responded in part by seeking identification of Toll’s sources. Toll declined to name them. Wilson ruled that the Nevada press shield law does not protect Toll as an online journalist. News reports said the judge found that journalists or news entities that are not members of the Nevada Press Association are not covered by the shield law. But that’s not what Wilson ruled. In fact, he wrote in his opinion that because of Toll’s press association membership, the reporter’s privilege “may apply” to Toll. The shield law contains a list. It defines those protected as “reporter, former reporter or editorial employee of any newspaper, periodical or press association or employee of any radio or television station,” and Wilson similarly found that “[b]ecause Toll was not a reporter for a newspaper or press association” when the Gilman article was published, he does not have the protection of the shield law. He did not specify that a reporter or employer must be a member of the NPA. The judge mentioned the NPA specifically in another context, as a press association
Toll chose to join after the article was published. The judge’s decision may not, as Nevada Press Association director Richard Karpel and University of Nevada, Reno journalism professor Patrick File have argued, be consistent with the “spirit” of the law. But judges don’t necessarily choose to enforce “spirits” of laws. That is generally a matter for legislators, and Wilson’s ruling is clearly consistent with the letter of the law. While judges need not address “spirit” issues, some do. In one 1998 federal case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Roger Hunt wrote, “Although this Court is not bound to follow Nevada law in determining whether a reporter should be compelled to disclose his or her sources, when dealing with purely federal issues of law, it should not ignore Nevada’s public policy, as expressed in its statute, of providing reporters protection from divulging their sources.” The current Nevada shield law language was enacted in 1975 under the sponsorship of Washoe Assemblymember Steve Coulter. His measure revised a 1969 enactment that created the list. The internet did not yet exist in either year and so was not listed among the employers of reporters. The 1975 enactment extended protection to unpublished information and added former reporters to its shield, a response to the jailing of former reporter William Farr, who covered the Manson family murder case for the Los Angeles Times and was ordered to name his sources for one story. He refused, but, when he left the Times, the order was
