Editorial: Public records bills still pending

As the Legislature grinds its way down to sine die in a couple of weeks, there are still some pending bills that could affect your ability and that of the press to see just what our elected and appointed officials are up to by being able to access public records.

Senate Bill 287 would put some teeth in the current Nevada public records law, which requires that all public records and books, except those specifically exempted as confidential by law, must be open for inspection and copying. Despite the clear language saying the law should be liberally interpreted various agencies have manufactured excuses for not complying or simply flouted the law and basically said: If you want it, sue us.

Meanwhile in North Carolina

Should SB287 become law, if a court determines a governmental entity or the person making the decision on behalf of the governmental entity wrongly denies a records request, the requester may be awarded a civil penalty of not less than $1,000 or more than $250,000 per offense from the agency or the responsible party or both.

Some lawmakers and public officials, of course, are blanching at the $250,000 threat, but there should be room for compromise.

Richard Karpel, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, recently commented, “SB287 represents a real opportunity to enact public-records reform in Nevada. Among many other helpful provisions, SB287 would establish civil penalties for government officials who fail to comply with the Public Records Act … limit the ability of local governments and state agencies to charge excessive fees for records requests; and require government workers to help requesters focus their requests to get the information they are seeking.”

Karpel noted the press association and other members of the newly formed Right to Know Nevada testified in support of the bill in early April during a Senate Government Affairs Committee meeting.

“An army of government lobbyists lined up to testify against it,” Karpel said but the bill remains extant and is being shepherded by lawmakers sympathetic to the cause.

He said the press association is participating in a working group, which includes both supporters and opponents of the bill, which is trying to address concerns raised during the hearing.

Though opponents have attempted to gut the bill and add sweeping exemptions to the public records law, Karpel said, “Fortunately, there is a real desire among many lawmakers to pass a public records bill this session. That includes Gov. (Steve) Sisolak, who commented on his support for government transparency and the need to ensure there are ‘repercussions’ for foot-dragging state agencies in (a) recent interview with the (Las Vegas) Review Journal. So we’re hopeful we can get SB287 to the finish line before the session ends in June.”

On the obverse side of the coin is Senate Bill 224, which would exempt from the public records law the names of those who are drawing taxpayer funded pensions from the Public Employees’ Retirement System.

SB224 narrowly passed in the state Senate a couple of weeks ago on a vote of 11-10 with two Democrats joining all eight Republicans in opposing it.

State Sen. Pete Goicoechea, a Eureka Republican, said he opposed the bill because the pensions are taxpayer funded. “The people who are paying those funds have the right to know the name and the amount,” he was quoted as saying at the time. “I believe the public does have the right to know who it is and how much they are benefiting.”

Proponents of the bill have argued pensioners could be affected by identity theft, though they’ve not sighted a single instance of this occurring. Opponents argue the release of the names can help detect abuse of the system.

A tip to California’s fraud hotline once resulted in its pension system recovering more than $200,000. In a statement the California public employee pension system praised “the great value of the public’s assistance in CalPERS’ efforts to protect the state pension system from fraud, waste, and abuse.”

In another case a Los Angeles television station discovered that a police officer who was drawing a disability pension from one city was working full-time as a police officer for another agency.

These abuses will be impossible to detect should SB224 pass and become law.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Editorial: Nevada water law needs to be more flexible

Humboldt River (John Lane photo)

Nevada is the driest state in the union and lawmakers are grappling with how water law in the state could be changed to cope with that fact.

The Legislative Commission’s Subcommittee to Study Water — chaired by state Sen. Pete Goicoechea, a Diamond Valley rancher whose district covers all of Elko, Eureka, Lincoln and White Pine counties and parts of Clark and Nye counties — met in Las Vegas this past week to hear seven hours of testimony on this topic. Other meetings are being scheduled around the state.

The first Nevada water law was passed in 1866 and recognized the vital role of mining in Nevada. The current law recognizes the basic principles of prior appropriation and beneficial use: First in time is first in right, but the water must be put to a beneficial use or the right is forfeited.

Jason King, the state engineer whose office determines water rights within the state, suggested several changes in the law, including “conjunctive management” of surface and ground water.

“We do not have anything in statute that allows us to conjunctively manage the surface water and ground water. …” King told the panel. “At a minimum we’d like to see some acknowledgment that our office has the ability to deal with surface water and ground water together.”

In prepared comments for the meeting, King’s office noted that the early history of water development in Nevada focused on surface water, and it was not until 1907 that issues regarding the use of groundwater began to emerge. Wells drilled in Las Vegas, for example, resulted in declines of spring flows and a drop in the water table. Not until 1913 did the Legislature enact a law that provided all water, surface and groundwater, is subject to appropriation.

King pointed out that the drought has caused conflicts between the holders of water permits for surface water and groundwater, and, if his office can’t mitigate those conflicts, the courts may rule the senior surface rights take precedent over the junior rights of water well owners and those wells could be ordered shut down to protect stream flows.

King also told the committee the law needs to be changed to allow flexibility in water management, including recognizing water banking as a beneficial use, suspending the use-it-or-lose it aspect of the law and changing the law’s priority structure under which domestic household water wells would have to be curtailed if they impacted senior surface water rights, calling that an obvious health and safety issue. King noted that 98 percent of domestic wells in Nevada have junior rights.

“It’s not anything our office gets any satisfaction out of, but I tell you we stand prepared to curtail by priority if we need to. …” the state engineer explained the requirement under current law. “Obviously, we don’t want to do that, but we’re ready to do that and that is our hammer in the water law.”

He said an example of cooperative water planning and mitigation occurred when Ely agreed to allow a copper mine to essentially dry up a stream in exchange for the jobs and economic benefits of the mine, and said his office needs that kind of flexibility.

King also called for metering of the vast majority of water used in the state, surface and groundwater, saying, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

One presenter at the water law meeting noted that a recent study found that in the Colorado River Basin the period of 2000 to 2015 was the driest 16-year period in the 101-year historical record for the basin and there are forecasts that suggest the region may be due for a three-decade-long megadrought.

On the other hand, a study of tree rings along the banks of the Colorado River by researchers from the University of Arizona found that the 20th century was the wettest of any century going back to the 4th century B.C.

So, what Nevada is experiencing now may well be normal and the wet 20th century was the anomaly — making it more urgent than ever to enact equitable changes to water law and experiment with allowing water to be bought and sold on the free market, the best way to allocate any commodity.

A version of this editorial appears this past week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Editorial: Bill would facilitate doctors ‘seeing’ patients remotely by using technology

Nevada already has one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios in the nation — 47th to be precise. Add to that the time and expense to bring the two together for in-person visits when the patient is living in a remote rural area.

This is where a bill sponsored by Assemblyman James Oscarson, R-Pahrump, comes into play. Assembly Bill 292 — co-sponsored by state Sens. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, and Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City — would require private insurers and Medicaid to reimburse for medical care provided electronically, such as videoconferencing, known as telehealth.

In the past, insurance companies have been reluctant pay for anything other than in-person doctor visits.

“It’s a bill that will really open a lot of areas to be able to access health care in a health process that is sweeping the country,” Oscarson said during a recent interview. “Open up specialists so people don’t have to travel. Open up to Medicaid. Open up to all kinds of different specialty services to be available. We’ve been having meetings on telehealth for the last 18 months in the governor’s office every month and having virtually ever person engaged in those conversations from the medical boards to the nursing boards to the EMS providers to the physicians boards, everybody engaged. We’re fine-tuning it right now.”

In a recent hearing before the Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor on the bill, Dr. Tracey Green, chief medical officer for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, noted that Nevada now has more than 600,000 people enrolled in Medicaid and the percentage of uninsured has dropped dramatically, but there are no more doctors to see this greater patient load.

“We are looking at a health provider shortage across our state,” she testified, especially in many rural and in many specialty practices.

Dr. Green said the state needs to look at alternative ways to efficiently use the health care providers we do have.

“Telehealth across the nation has really opened up an opportunity for individual patients to receive access to services,” she said, “but as importantly it also opens up a consulting network for our current providers.”

For example, she noted that in an area that has no psychiatrist, a primary care physician could consult with a psychiatrist in another part of the state, allowing the doctor to provide appropriate care.

The bill allows a physician to practice wherever they are rather than always having to bring the patient and physician together, often over great distances.

Also during that committee hearing, Oscarson noted, “As we all know the Affordable Care Act mandates that all persons have health insurance, but we also know the distribution of Nevada’s population poses a challenge to providing health care services to people living in our rural and frontier areas. Access to health insurance and finding a creative solution to address our shortage of health care workers is a topic of great importance to me.”

He also said, “Use of telehealth technologies is not a new concept to Nevada, in fact some providers already have well established systems, I’ve been able to view several of those systems, had demonstrations of those systems …”

Telehealth also allows the practice of preventative medicine and could reduce the need for expensive emergency room visits.

“The intent of this legislation is to fully capitalize on opportunities which existing technology provides in order to expand health care to all Nevadans,” Oscarson testified.

Some insurance company co-pays for telehealth are less expensive than for an in-person visit, Oscarson noted, adding that the market should set the price of care.

AB292 has the potential to save countless hours and considerable amounts of money, perhaps even lives. We urge the Legislature to pass this vital piece of legislation.

A version of this editorial appears this week in the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record.