What are they hiding? College conceals convicted murderer’s records

The College of Southern Nevada is citing a convicted murderer’s privacy rights in refusing to release his work history to the public, records show.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has been trying for two years to obtain then-Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles’ personnel records from the school. In the school’s most recent response, staff wrote that current and former employees have a “non-trivial privacy interest to prevent an unwarranted invasion of privacy.”

Telles, who was an HVAC specialist at the school between 2008 and 2015, was arrested in 2022 as the suspect in the slaying of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German.

After the arrest, CSN denied the records request, writing that the Nevada System of Higher Education code prevents the release of employee complaints and discipline if they existed. That was despite taxpayers paying Telles more than $70,000 a year in salary and benefits for most of the years he worked at the school. In 2009, taxpayers paid him $88,000, TransparentNevada shows.

The newspaper refiled the request Oct. 16 after Telles was convicted in August and sentenced last month to life in prison for the murder. Again — except for providing the dates of Telles’ employment — the school refused to release any discipline, performance reviews or complaint records about Telles.

Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook said the school is siding with a murderer instead of the public’s right to know.

“Contrary to what nearly all Nevada government agencies assert — and how many laws, codes and court rulings they cynically and deliberately misrepresent — the personnel records of public employees are not confidential,” he said. “The College of Southern Nevada can release the employment records of Robert Telles. The college is simply choosing not to do so, valuing the ‘privacy’ of a convicted murderer over public interest.”

In the denial last week, CSN again cited the NSHE code and a series of rulings that it said provide employees “constitutional rights to privacy.”

Administrative code cannot circumvent the Nevada Public Records Act, which does not have an exemption that allows governments to withhold personnel records. The employees’ salaries and pensions are paid for with taxpayer dollars so, transparency advocates say, the public has the right to know what the people they pay are doing.

‘No categorical confidentiality’

Review-Journal Chief Legal Officer Ben Lipman said the school is misusing court rulings to improperly withhold the public information.

“They take cases in which the Nevada Supreme Court has said there may be some limited information in personnel records that can be redacted while making clear there is no categorical confidentiality to personnel records and have wrongly asserted that the cases establish a categorical confidentiality to personnel records simply because there may be some limited information that can be redacted,” he said. “They also refuse to consider the public importance of the information, which by law must always be weighed against any claim of confidentiality and, if it is important enough, outweighs otherwise legitimate confidentiality, which isn’t present in this case in any event.”

While many governments like the Metropolitan Police Department, UNLV and the Clark County School District have refused to provide key information about their employees, some agencies have made employment and disciplinary records available.

In 2020, Henderson police released internal affairs records of officers with repeated complaints. The documents showed that some patrol officers and supervisors were permitted to continue working or even promoted despite serious misconduct allegations.

Last year, Clark County decided to release internal personnel investigations about top staff, saying managers should be held to a higher standard. The county still declined to provide documentation about misconduct allegations against lower-level employees.

CSN spokesman Richard Lake did not respond to requests for an interview or to provide a CSN staffer to explain the decision to withhold Telles’ employment records.

The “What Are They Hiding?” column was created to educate Nevadans about transparency laws, inform readers about Review-Journal coverage being stymied by bureaucracies and shame public officials into being open with the hardworking people who pay all of government’s bills. Were you wrongly denied access to public records? Share your story with us at whataretheyhiding@reviewjournal.com.

Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com and follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is editor of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.