Photo/Dennis Myers
Assembly Democrats met in this closed room off the actual legislative hall during the special session of the Nevada Legislature. Because it was technically a political party meeting instead of a legislative meeting, the public could be excluded, even though there was legislative business being done there. The sign on the door reads, “STOP/ CAUCUS IN SESSION.”
Kill switch smart or not? Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto’s office is drafting legislation to require “kill switches” on cell phones sold in the state. The switch allows the owner to remotely disable the phone if it is stolen, creating a disincentive for thieves, but it also allows others— such as the police—to do the same. The Cortez Masto draft may be unnecessary by the time it is submitted to the Nevada Legislature. Given the huge size of the California market—the state makes up just over 12 percent of the population of the United States—it’s possible that phone manufacturers will build the kill switches into all models rather than provide switch-free versions to states that have no such requirement. The attorney general is allowed to request up to 20 drafts of legislation from the legislative bill drafters. But Cortez Masto is termed out and will be out of office by the time the legislature goes into session next year, so it will be the decision of her successor whether to continue with the kill switch measure. Candidates for the job are Republican Adam Laxalt and Democrat Ross Miller. Mobile carriers say the switches will make smart phones more susceptible to hackers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a letter to California legislator Susan Bonilla, opposed the legislation, saying the technology was already available on an optional basis and the legislation “is not explicit about who can activate such a switch. … [M]andating a solution through legislation is not the right approach.” But Consumers Union supported the legislation, less for theft prevention than because the smart phones contain so much private information. The organization conceded that kill technology is already available but said its inclusion in devices should be mandatory by law. “Every smart phone should be required to have a ‘kill switch’ that lets you wipe personal information off your device,” it said in a prepared statement. “What’s more, you should be able to disable your phone remotely to make it inoperable to thieves. And if you’re fortunate enough to get your phone back, it should be easy to reactivate.” On Aug. 11, 2011, during protests on Bay Area Rapid Transit stations against a police killing of a homeless man, BART disabled cell service to four stations to hamper coordination of the protests. That angered some residents who joined the subsequent day’s protest. It also sparked a Federal Communications Commission investigation of BART and prompted the California Legislature to pass a law limiting official interference with cell transmissions. It’s not just community groups whose work could be disrupted. The Columbia Journalism Review described the problem for photographers and reporters: “You’re a journalist covering a street protest, and the local police chief doesn’t like the photos you’re tweeting from your iPhone. One shows an officer arresting a minister. Another shows a protester surrendering as an officer chokes him. Yet another shows a teargas canister landing near a group of young people. The batons and rubber bullets come out, and the chief remotely disables the journalist’s iPhone, rendering it useless.” The blockage may not stop reporting of a news event, but it slows things down until law enforcement gets all its ducks and spin doctors in a row and may well get its account of an event out before onthe-scene observers. In California, that would likely be illegal under the post-BART protest law, but what are the chances that local prosecutors will charge the police with a crime? In Nevada, there is no crime to charge.
Welfare west A few days after Nevada sharply reduced its tax break for movie, television and other productions, California tripled its subsidies for those kind of productions. Just to rub it in, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure in daylight in front of one of the industry’s most colorful sites—the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The Nevada fund for film incentives was slashed from $80 million to $10 million, with the abatements then diverted to the planned Tesla car battery plant in Storey County.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
Closed to the public Nevada Legislature ignores voter-enacted open meeting law If the Nevada Legislature fell under the state’s open meeting law, the attorney general might now be investigatby ing both the governor and the Dennis Myers legislature. The open meeting law requires three days notice of a public meeting and also requires that it be posted to a public body’s website. The Nevada Legislature did not provide that notice of the special session last month. This was because the governor didn’t call the session until a few hours before it was supposed to start, and only he can write the agenda for the special session. So that
“There’s still a lot of the process going on behind closed doors.” Barry Smith nevada Press Association agenda—also required of other public bodies three days in advance—was unavailable to the public, thanks to the governor’s delay. The state’s open meeting law does not cover the Nevada Legislature, but there is open meeting language in the Nevada Constitution that does—but the lawmakers ignore it. It was contained in a constitutional amendment approved by voters 20 years ago this coming November.
The amendment originated with Assemblymember Steve Coulter, who had been working for legislative open meeting since 1975. He and other legislators initially wanted to simply bring the legislature under the regular open meeting law, but a legislative lawyer said that because of existing constitutional language allowing the Senate to close its sessions, only a constitutional amendment would do the job. In his last legislature in 1981, Coulter’s latest measure was changed from an amendment to open legislative meetings to a measure that would do exactly the opposite. It was rejected by voters. There the issue lay for another eight years. But then, in 1989, the part-time legislators voted themselves an increase in their legislative pensions, a step that rubbed raw the nerves of rank-and-file voters. The public reaction was fierce, the lawmakers begged the governor for a special session where they repealed the hike, but the issue still took a toll, prompting a number of election defeats. Legislative leaders at the next legislature, in 1991, seized on reviving the constitutional amendment requiring open legislative meetings as a way to repair their tattered reputation. It was approved and then given secondround approval by the 1993 legislative session. Voters approved it as Question 2 in the 1994 election, 78 to 22 percent. No recount was required.
The legislators who had embraced open meetings so desperately then took a wholly cynical step. They ignored the new law. To this day, no rules such as time requirements for posting agendas have been adopted. The only mentions of meetings in the legislature’s joint rules deal with the date of first joint meetings on budgets of state agencies, committee meeting records, and conference committee meetings. And much legislative business has been moved out of legislative bodies and into groups that do not fall under the law. The language now in the constitution reads, at article 4, section 15, “The doors of each House shall be kept open during its session, and neither shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days nor to any other place than that in which they may be holding their sessions. The meetings of all legislative committees must be open to the public, except meetings held to consider the character, alleged misconduct, professional competence, or physical or mental health of a person.” In the years after its enactment, legislative leaders moved to two new techniques for doing business behind closed doors—party caucuses and leadership meetings. The caucuses were not solely a product of the new law. They were also fueled by the increasing polarization of politics in the United States. As the public became less partisan, politics became more so. Legislative bodies—national, state, and even local in some jurisdictions—were riven by partisan splits and the camaraderie and congeniality that once characterized legislative politics left the scene. In the Nevada Legislature, as lawmakers of opposing parties stopped lunching together, they retreated into party caucuses to meet and plan strategy, enforce discipline, and try to scrape every possible bit of party advantage out of any development. When Spike Wilson, who had stepped down from a Washoe County Senate seat in 1986 after a widely admired 16-year tenure, returned to visit in the late 1990s, he was astonished by the number of caucuses. “I don’t think we ever had a party caucus when I was there,” he said. The advantage to open meeting opponents—who seemed to include all legislators, since no
