No So Public Records

So I gave comments at the Public Records Task Force today. But somehow they weren't recorded. Everything else was but me. 

comment 1

I have to start with this. I wasn’t going to come in person today but it concerned me that this task force has taken away the zoom access to the meeting and left us with a phone only option this time when the phone option has yet to work as witnessed by my friend Joe Panicaro in Reno. I don’t want to be here as we are directly across the street from where I was raped and I’m silently having a panic so bear with me.

Now I have written up a bit of a tome on the topics of transparency and preservation with sample legislative language. What can I say I’m unemployed and I was bored. Unfortunately i am limited to two pages. So I wrote small. Zoom in or use the QR code in the footer to access the full size documents.

Let’s start with preservation.

I just lost my public records law suit agains the attorney generals office who have refused to give me any record of the investigation into my sexual assault by the former deputy insurance commissioner. They have ignored requests and just haven’t produced any substantive records in my case.

This happened right at the two year mark. And two years is how long Nevada retains emails.

Because it was a procedural issue because I didn’t serve them I. Person in Carson City. I can go back and file the public-records case again.

But here’s the problem.

The majority of the records I was trying to obtain ate potentially already gone.

Ta-da. That is how we solve problems in Nevada state government.

Now, when you say “government cover-up,” imagery of tin-foil hats abound.

But there is another phenomenon that I personally call lawyers doing lawyer stuff.

You don’t need a conspiracy.

Sometimes you just have a series of perfectly legal procedural barriers that happen to produce the exact same result.

It took a full year to get the public records.

The records about the investigation into me person I received included evidence that I had called and no one responded. I had emailed and no one responded. I received copies of the lawsuit I had filed to get the records I was receiving. That is some form if bureaucratic irony getting your own law suit back in the public records response you had sued them for. But not a word about the counterterrorism investigation into a rape victim.

Some of the records I was asking for were approaching and now have reached, the end of their ordinary retention period.

That creates a fundamental problem Because you have a very simple loophole, run out the clock.

What I proposeis preservation periods. We have some in place however they should be codified and explicit. Ie I am asking for all potentially responsive records to be preserved until all appeals have been exhausted. And a special rule for criminal matters extending that retention period to the length of the statute of limitations for the crime.

Please take a look and hopefully you can discuss at the next and final meeting. I’ll be back to talk about transparency at the end.

comment 2

As a failed academic you guys are killing me.

Research bias is the word you are looking for.

Citations matter

1. The Nevada public records act provides for all citizens for whatever reason to be able to receive public records. It is literally the part of the governments job description to do the work and provide those public records regardless of use. I could be wall papering my bathroom with these documents.

2. The state of Vermont charged me $90 for four redacted emails about my rapists resignation, but here’s the thing it took 3 days start to finish. Make me wait a year? I’m not paying you. If you want to modernize, you might want to charge per byte of data rather than page because the cost is in the data storage, not paper and toner.

1. the public is left with 180 seconds to articulate law and two pages, the language mightn’t be legally precise as opposed to written statements with no limits from government entities.
2. A victim needs the police report for several reasons including victims relief funds

Back to transparency

I allege that a public official raped me on video. That’s not nothing. There was a felony warrant request in this case. I was told he was being arrested but it was a jurisdictional issue. The only possibility for jurisdiction would be between the AG and the DA. I have spent years trying to reconstruct what happened through public records that the AG refuses to give me.

I am not asking this Task Force to decide whether my allegations are true. I’m stating in plain language they exist but the attorney general is now withholding record it ever happened.

I don’t know why

I will never know.

That is precisely the problem.

I’m not special. If it can happen to me it has happened to others and will happen again unless we take steps to tighten the law and prevent obfuscation of the public records.

So what I propose is an addition to the law regarding. Elected, appointed, and potentially exempt employees.

People in those positions should be beyond reproach.

I could have easily if I were a different type of person extorted or blackmailed the deputy insurance commissioner.

In addition to that there is the matter of the the tens of millions of dollars he collected as the head of enforcement for the division of insurance during his tenure could be challenged due to his misconduct and possibly need to be returned to those who paid those fines and chose to challenge the decisions at the tax payers expense.

This is the reality and potential issues with what happened with me.

This is why we need transparency

As a citizen, I do generally want to know when my public officials have been credibly accused to the point administrative synopsis’s have been authored to determine whether he should be immediately forced to to resign as was the case with my rapist.

I would want to know what happened there, particularly when the entire administration of the Division of Insurance was gone without a word or a trace within 6 months.while insurance across the board increased for all Nevadans during that time.

Something happened here a
So please take a look at what I wrote and take it into consideration as a possible recommendation.

Because What happened here isn’t okay.

The end of it shouldn’t be throwing your hands in the air and saying Who knows? The answer to that question is the AG’s office. The Ag is the one who knows the answers and won’t give them to me.