The Young Lawyers section of the State Bar has a program for elementary school students called “Goldilocks: The Trial of the Century.” The idea is that lawyers go into classrooms, show a short video of Goldilocks on trial for breaking and entering and destruction of property, and then ask the kids to reach a verdict. It’s aimed at 5th graders, but any grade level can get something fun out of it. My daughter’s 3rd grade class last year loved it, but their “jury” hung – half the class thought she was just trying to survive, and the other were literally chanting “Guilty! Guilty!” The teacher told me they were still debating the issue in class weeks later.

This sort of thing is a ton of fun for both parents and kids, exposes kids early to career paths and ideas, and provides students with a broader, more worldly perspective. Just as important are the tens of thousands of parent volunteer hours put in at schools, from organizing school supplies to helping kindergartners out in art class to sewing costumes for school plays.

So of course, the government proceeded to make it difficult and expensive to volunteer in our schools. For the children, of course.

Last year, the Legislature unanimously passed SB 213, the primary purpose of which was to respond to real deficiencies in how our schools deal with special needs students. But the bill also required additional, intensive background checks for any “volunteer” who is “likely to have regular or unsupervised contact with children.” (This includes fingerprinting and other checks to which regular public school employees are subjected.) Because it’s reasonably foreseeable that a teacher will step out of the classroom for a minute to use the bathroom while another grownup stays in the room working with the children, the background checks apply to everyone who walks into a school to help a teacher.

The issue of intensive background checks for volunteers wasn’t even in the original bill, and wasn’t considered in the original hearing on the measure. Right before it was passed on to the Finance Committee, a massive amendment was added, which included the new provisions. The volunteer issue wasn’t discussed in that committee, either. (The discussion consisted mostly of assurances that the federal government would pay for everything through grants.) Once passed and sent to the Assembly, there was only a single question in committee about this massive new volunteer change, where Senator Heidi Gansert glibly – and incorrectly, it turns out – assured the committee members that it would not affect “a parent who wants to come in and read to the class.”

The result of this legislation is not surprising. When you make things more expensive and more burdensome, you get less of it.

My wife and I both duly went and got fingerprinted, even though my fingerprints are on file with at least a half-dozen government agencies in Northern Nevada, and even though we both hold a professional license that would likely be revoked if a background check revealed either of us to be a nefarious predator. But no doubt others with less time, means, or inclination did not.

We know this because the governor had to sign off on emergency regulations to fix what the legislature screwed up, redefining the term “volunteers” and in effect, re-writing the legislation. Gov. Sandoval, of course, bears some responsibility for the bad bill since he signed it into law, but he wasn’t sitting in committee meetings crafting the language, either.

There is a lesson to be learned from this self-inflicted mess:  carelessness and thoughtlessness about unintended (but perfectly predictable) consequences can lead to bad lawmaking and affect the lives of hundreds if not thousands of decent people.

Carelessness is not malice, obviously. I’m sure everyone who voted for the measure was sincere in wanting children protected from the molester who is apparently hiding behind every playground tree, but the damage done is no less than if legislators all grew mustaches and started twirling them with an evil laugh.

(Here’s an irony:  if someone smart had voted against the measure because it was badly worded and they could see it would have adverse consequences, they likely would have been the subject of a negative campaign mailer saying they “voted against protecting our children.” Remember this example the next time you see such a claim in a campaign. You can likely take to the bank that it’s so out of context as to be outright dishonest.)

And then there’s the thoughtlessness. Anyone with any common sense could have foreseen that this would burden parental volunteers, cause some parents to be unable or unwilling to participate and lead liability-fearing school administrators to refuse to accept otherwise capable and willing volunteers. Sometimes, it’s part of the deal to accept some tradeoffs with these sort of safety measures, but then you’d at least want an appreciable increase in safety.

In this circumstance, just what is the problem we’re trying to solve? No safety statistics were mentioned in the legislative hearings, so it wasn’t the data. There was no new epidemic of children being molested or kidnapped that this law would have solved. Had we recently suffered an unprecedented string of school volunteers attacking children in the five or ten minutes they were left alone with them? Of course not – just the opposite, in fact.

Solutions-in-search-of-problems inevitably just create more problems to solve.

Obviously, I’m not opposed to keeping my kids safe. I’m a prosecutor, which means I spend way too much of my life dealing with child molesters and abusers. But this thing that happened at the Legislature was nothing more than kabuki theater, costing time and money for no gain. Think of it as the TSA-ization of public schools, and you won’t be far off.

Any legislator who votes for a bill without considering the second, third, and fourth order consequences of their votes are derelict in his or her duties, and it happens far too often. The current group – most of whom are certain to return to Carson City in February – is particularly bad. When a calm, collaborative, and deferential governor like Brian Sandoval has to break veto records, you know members of legislative leadership are not fully engaging their brains. And it’s why Adam Laxalt, in spite of my many misgivings about his candidacy, is likely to get my vote as long as the Democrats control the Senate and Assembly. A Gov. Steve Sisolak is going to be a rubber stamp, not a proofreader, with no check on carelessly written legislation from his own party.

In conclusion, the school volunteer thing is annoying, but isn’t the worst mistake ever made in Carson City. But if you screw up the little things, I’m going to expect you to screw up the big things, too. Every would-be policy maker must commit themselves to being more careful and thoughtful. And in the meantime, the less we allow demonstrably careless and thoughtless people to regulate our lives, the better off we all will be.

Disclosure: Steve Sisolak has donated to The Nevada Independent. You can see a full list of donors here.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City. His opinions here are his own. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].