March 16-22 is national Sunshine Week. The week is promoted by a nonpartisan alliance of those in journalism, law, education and others advocating for open government all around the county.

The Nevada Open Government Coalition and the Nevada Press Association are celebrating Sunshine Week on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. The event is from 6-8 p.m. at the Brewery Arts Center in Carson City. We invite all who care about open government issues to join us. 

It’s a good time to consider some of what is being proposed by lawmakers. The 2025 session of the Nevada Legislature is a mixed bag for transparency in government. Some bills proposed would increase transparency, but others would increase public records fees, further cloak government records in secrecy and could stall citizen access to public records.

One proposal that would expand transparency is Assm. Heidi Kasama’s (R-Las Vegas) AJR3, supported by Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, to make legislative activities subject to open records laws. Currently, legislators are exempt from providing information to the public, such as budgets, emails and calendars.

The Nevada Open Government Coalition is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization that supports this proposed constitutional amendment to increase transparency for lawmakers in the same ways local governments and the state’s executive branch are subject to public information laws.

Other bills, however, propose to cloak records in secrecy and increase costs for the public. AB51, proposed by the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities, would allow government agencies to charge a “reasonable fee” for the use of staff and technological resources to fulfill a public records request. That would be on top of fees already allowed in state law, which must not exceed the actual cost of fulfilling a request. 

This bill puts into the hands of the government the authority to not only charge the public fees, but to decide how much those fees should be. 

AB51 is a double hit to the public — citizens already pay employee salaries through taxes, and charging for those same employees to retrieve and provide government records means taxpayers will be paying twice for government agencies to produce records that should be made available for free. We believe that government records should be efficiently retrievable so that fees are unnecessary, and that as much information as possible should be proactively made public by governments so citizens don’t even need to ask. 

The bill is antithetical to open governance. 

Most disturbing is that governments get to decide how much to charge. Charging fees for police body cam footage, for example, is already prohibitively expensive for most people. If government agencies get to decide how much to charge citizens for records that rightfully belong to them, the Nevada Public Records Act would be rendered meaningless. Excessive fees — and excessive delays many already experience in trying to get records — would disincentivize people from even asking for their records.

For Sunshine Week, we urge you to contact your legislators and encourage them to oppose AB51 and support more transparency in government, not less. 

The Nevada Open Government Coalition is a nonpartisan, 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2020 that supports democratic government accountability through transparency. The diverse, all-volunteer coalition educates, advocates, and empowers civic engagement in Nevada through increased access to government information processes and public understanding of public records laws, open meetings laws and other issues related to open government. Board members include Michelle Rindels, president; Bob Conrad, vice president; Maggie McLetchie, treasurer; Sondra Cosgrove, secretary; and board members Marla McDade Williams, Rio Yamat, Colton Lochhead, Peggy Santoro, Art Kane, Kurt Hildebrand, Anjeanette Damon, Alexander Falconi, Shelby Fleshood and Christopher Peterson.