EDITORIAL: County loses again in bid to conceal autopsy reports

The Nevada Supreme Court on Tuesday put an end to Clark County’s arrogant and egregious effort to ignore the state’s open record statutes.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of three justices rejected the county’s effort to continue to keep child autopsy reports confidential while the case regarding their status is appealed.

In other words, the court saw through the county’s endless delaying tactics. The ruling is a victory for public accountability, government transparency and state law.

It was the second time this year that the Supreme Court weighed in on the matter. In February, the justices sided with the Review-Journal in the newspaper’s longstanding effort to gain access to the records from the Clark County coroner. The court did, however, allow for the redaction of certain private medical information and kicked the case back to District Judge Jim Crockett.

But the county continued to resist, and Judge Crockett discovered that the coroner hadn’t even bothered to redact most of the reports. He then chided the local government for refusing to comply with the law and ordered the coroner to make the records available by the end of December.

“Why the coroner’s office does not link arms with the Review-Journal and provide records freely and voluntarily is unimaginable,” the judge said. “Everything demonstrates the coroner’s office is bound and determined to circumvent and avoid the Nevada Public Records Act by stonewalling and obfuscating.”

Yet even after that rebuke, the County Commission inexplicably voted to keep fighting the release of the documents. Tuesday’s decision, however, is clear — at least as it concerns the 600 or so autopsy reports at issue.

“While the coroner has resisted the (Nevada Public Records Act) at every turn, this should be the end of the road,” said Maggie McLetchie, who represented the Review-Journal in the case. “The time to provide access to these critical records has long since passed.”

Clark County has spent upwards of $80,000 in taxpayer money to keep public records from those very same taxpayers. It has lost at every turn. The records in question are vital to determine how the child welfare system is serving those it is supposed to protect. What is there to hide?

The county has appealed further, of course — proof that common sense is a rare commoty down at the Government Center. It will lose again. And if this case proves anything, it’s how devoted many public officials are to protecting the bureaucracy at the expense of the taxpayers they are paid to represent — and how open record laws must be fortified to include significant financial sanctions for willful and flagrant violations.