EDITORIAL: Clark County flouts law with redactions

Public records law only goes so far in making governments transparent to the taxpaying public. If officials don’t believe in the spirit of the law, and if they have information they want to hide, they will find ways around the law to justify secrecy.

When this newspaper requested a copy of an arbitration ruling that returned to work a fired Clark County Department of Family Services employee, it received a heavily redacted version. What was left of the document did little to support the arbitrator’s ruling in connection with the child abuse death of 7-year-old Roderick “RJ” Arrington Jr.

In fact, the Colorado arbitrator had written, “It is entirely clear, however, that the Grievant (Jadon Davis) was not directly responsible for the child’s death.” County officials had removed that line from the report they provided to the Review-Journal. The newspaper subsequently obtained an uncut version of the ruling from another source to get the rest of the story, which now screams of an attempted cover-up.

Clark County attorneys also withheld a two-page supplemental arbitration award detailing the legal reasons for returning Mr. Davis to work; the 4½-page narrative that describes the hotline call received by Mr. Davis regarding RJ and how he handled it; and the section where the arbitrator noted supervisors made “laudatory comments” about Mr. Davis’ performance and found he turned to senior workers for guidance.

Any testimony or information that was critical of Mr. Davis was included. Anything that appeared to vindicate him was not.

“The evidence of record failed to support the County’s contentions that the Grievant acted with negligence,” the arbitrator wrote. County officials didn’t want the Review-Journal to see that statement, either.

The Review-Journal’s reporting on this matter, and its disclosure of the unedited report, prompted County Commissioner Tom Collins to cuss out a reporter last week. The increasingly unstable commissioner tends to be on the wrong side of every issue these days.

There are still many questions surrounding the death of RJ and why no one came to his aid when a school employee notified DFS of potential abuse. It cost the boy his life. But the county’s suspicious editing only highlights the lack of accountability within the child welfare system — and its troubling lack of transparency as well.