PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
The Las Vegas Review-Journal found itself in the position of covering itself.
Meeting complaint against Schwartz Reno personal property appraiser Joyce Newman has filed an open meeting complaint over state Treasurer Dan Schwartz’s handling of the adoption of regulations for the new state program that pays parents to take their children out of public school. Schwartz administers the program. Newman said she signed up to receive notices of meeting agendas but that the delivery of them was spotty. “When I became aware by checking the treasurer’s website that future hearings had been scheduled, I contacted the treasurer’s office to make sure I was still on the email distribution list,” she said in a prepared statement. “I received no response and received no more notices, including that for the October 20 ‘adoption hearing’ or for the hearing originally scheduled to adopt regulations on November 23. Additionally, the notice I received for the August 21 workshop was emailed on August 20—one day prior to the workshop. The Nevada Administrative Procedures Act NRS 233b.061(2) requires workshop notices to be sent ‘not less than 15 days before the workshop … to each person who has requested to be placed on a mailing list.’ ” • In related news, the public was given no notice of Assembly Concurrent Resolution 1 at this month’s special session of the Nevada Legislature. The lawmakers have always exempted themselves from the open meeting law. ACR 1 is a nonbinding measure that Republicans claim provides guidance on their legislative intent in creating the school grants program at the regular session of the legislature last May. An examination of legislative records indicates that ACR 1 was introduced in the Senate no earlier than 3:12 p.m. on Dec. 19 and was given final approval in the Assembly at 3:49 p.m. As a result of that 37-minute sprint, the public was given no opportunity to testify on the measure in legislative hearings. None were held. In addition, it was approved by the Senate on a voice vote, so no roll call is available to the public. • Additionally, the law firm of Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison has added another lawsuit to the court load surrounding the new school grants program—this one to seek rapid court action on the earlier suits. Two earlier lawsuits were filed to challenge the new law, one by a parents group, the other by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. “Families across Nevada right now are planning their children’s educational future and for thousands of households, the plan includes access to ESAs [education savings accounts],” Hutchison said in a prepared statement when the suit was filed on Dec. 22. “On behalf of these families, we will seek an expedited decision to meet the timeline set forth by the law and, most importantly, to provide greater certainty for our students, parents, educators, and schools.” But apparently signals got crossed in GOP ranks. Republican Hutchison’s action prompted Republican Schwartz to freak out and issue his own statement: “The State Treasurer’s Office is baffled by Lt. Governor Hutchison’s recent legal maneuvers. We have complete confidence in Attorney General [Adam] Laxalt’s handling of the two cases already filed. Mr. Hutchison’s lawsuit amounts to little more than a side track to nowhere. Hoping to bypass the current cases, the Lieutenant Governor could well jeopardize the attorney general’s defense of Nevada’s ESA program, endangering very real benefits for the children and parents of Nevada.” (Hutchison’s statement made no reference to Laxalt.) Hutchison said his action sought “expedited” action on the initial two lawsuits, while Schwartz said Hutchison is seeking to “bypass” those lawsuits. Schwartz may have been distressed by being named as a defendant in the Hutchison suit—he mentioned it in his news release— though it is routine for administrators of programs to be named when programs are sued. • Finally, Treasurer Schwartz—who has accelerated the school grants program at every opportunity—said last week he may hold a “summit” meeting next spring on how to retool the program at the 2017 Nevada Legislature.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
DECEMBER 31, 2015
Under pressure Nevada newspapers move into partisan hands On Dec. 10, it was announced that the Las Vegas Review-Journal had been purchased by a newly formed by Delaware limited liability company Dennis Myers that turned out to be a front group for billionaire Sheldon Adelson—who, to be sure, had been the first suspect on nearly everyone’s list of possible mystery buyers. That put the right wing billionaire—who has a history of using his Israeli newspaper as a political weapon—in control of the largest newspaper in the largest county of the state that holds the third presidential nominating event of 2016.
“I don’t like journalism.” Sheldon Adelson Newspaper owner
But what concerns Democrats on the local level is that it is of a piece with another development that also reduces the party’s ability to get its message out—the acquisition of several small newspapers around the state by a corporation co-owned by a former right-wing Review-Journal publisher. Battle Born Media, owned by former RJ publisher Sherman Frederick and Associated Press sportswriter Tim Dahlberg, has acquired the Ely Times, Mineral County
Independent-News, Lincoln County Record, Eureka Sentinel, Mesquite Local News, and Sparks Tribune. Frederick is a climate change denier who once claimed President Obama was having an affair. In the case of Adelson, his newspaper Israel Hayom (Israel Today) is essentially an adjunct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career. If the Nevada newspaper is used in similar fashion, it would be a powerful tool in a state whose demographics have been moving steadily Democratic. The combination of the biggest print organ in the state and scattered small print outlets could have an impact on state political debate. If Adelson and Battle Born use their newspapers as weapons, “It completely distorts [political dialogue] and essentially eliminates it,” said political analyst Fred Lokken. There are indications that Adelson was taking steps in that direction even before taking ownership of the RJ. About a month before the ReviewJournal changed hands, while purchase talks were going on between the newspaper and Adelson representatives, RJ reporters were assigned to investigate three judges, including Elizabeth Gonzalez, who is presiding on a lawsuit against Adelson by one of his former Macau casino execs. In 2014, Democratic lethargy and low turnout gave Republicans their most sweeping victory in Nevada since 1890, but expectations of
Democratic comeback in 2016 have been frequent, both because of public reaction to GOP policies and because of the state’s demographics. “Clark County is the Democratic stronghold,” said one state legislator on background last week. “A relentless pounding [by the newspaper] could take away our demographic advantages.” “Not necessarily,” Lokken said. If Adelson turns the newspaper into a Republican mouthpiece, he said, the damage could be more to the newspaper itself than to the Democrats because it would lose credibility, akin to Fox News in broadcasting. “It then represents an ideology,” Lokken said. “It ceases to become a newspaper and becomes propaganda and the public reacts accordingly.” Fox tends to attract not an audience looking for information, but an audience that seeks confirmation of what it already believes. “People who have not made up their minds will look somewhere else for a newspaper” if the RJ becomes a conservative mouthpiece, Lokken said. After the RJ takeover, Adelson’s managers posted an editorial promising to make the newspaper “fair, unbiased and accurate”—not greatly different from the Fox News slogan, “fair and balanced.” It was not an assurance that heartened the staff of the newspaper, given that it came on the heels of those same managers stopping the presses to remove a quote from one of the stories they’d written. But it did make the point that eventually, a publisher can enforce his will on the newspaper he owns. “I don’t like journalism,” Adelson said on Nov. 9 last year, according to Israel’s Haaretz. (On the same occasion, he also said, “The Palestinians are an invented people,” according to the Times of Israel.) But that hasn’t stopped him from acquiring more properties. “How Sheldon Adelson is buying up Israel’s media,” was a 2014 headline in the Washington Post. His Las Vegas public image is divisive. The newspaper he now owns reported in 2005, “He spent $2 million to support local candidates, and his battle against the Culinary Union made him such a polarizing figure that his support for anyone was like the kiss of a black-widow spider. He was hated by a large segment of the voters.” Adelson in 2012 virtually singlehandedly kept Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign alive with millions of dollars when the candidacy had become hopeless. Such episodes make some believe there is no reason to worry about Adelson’s impact,
