Nevada committee hears bill to exempt historical records from standard five-day public-records response

CARSON CITY — The Assembly Committee on Government Affairs on March 12 opened a hearing on Assembly Bill 152, a measure that would allow state and local government entities to treat certain historical records differently from ordinary public-records requests, potentially removing the five‑day statutory response obligation for documents outside established retention schedules.

Sponsor Assemblyman Ken Gray (R‑Assembly District 39) said the bill is intended to protect local government staff from “vexatious records requesters” and to let governments focus on “real records request[s] for citizens that truly need it.” He told the committee that the change “isn’t to stop these records from being seen by anybody” but to avoid tying up personnel on fishing expeditions.

Cameron Gresch, Carson City government affairs liaison, told the committee “this bill does not change public access to any records,” and framed the measure as a practical response to the time and cost of retrieving nondigitized, older materials that often require climate‑controlled storage and manual searches. Mayor Laurie Bagwell of Carson City said the bill would let governments arrange appointments for in‑person inspection of old records rather than being required to produce copies on the statutory timetable: “We don't have to do the 5 days, and hurry up and get you a public record for something that's 30, 40, 50 years old that is not digitized.”

Supporters from local governments and associations — including the Nevada Association of Counties, the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities, the Urban Consortium (Reno, Sparks, Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas), the Nevada System of Higher Education, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and several municipal records officers — told the committee AB152 would align record‑production obligations with the state’s retention schedule and reduce administrative costs. Patricia Cabrera, Enterprise Records Officer for the City of Las Vegas, said the bill “does not change what records must be retained or for how long” and that it would “ensure agencies can focus on maintaining access to records that are still within the required retention period.”

Opponents, including members of the Nevada Open Government Coalition, the Nevada Press Association and the ACLU of Nevada, warned the current draft could undermine transparency. Bob Conrad of the Open Government Coalition said the bill “creates a law where one is not needed” and cautioned that exempting production could allow governments to deny access “even before they are officially purged.” Kent Ervin, a Reno resident who has researched historical records, urged an archival policy that preserves access to historically significant documents and sets clear rules for archiving and public inspection.

Committee members pressed the sponsors on specifics. Lawmakers asked whether the bill would change existing statutory deadlines (it would not, sponsors said for records within retention periods) and how governments would ensure records kept for historical reasons remain accessible. Speakers noted current practice: most jurisdictions follow a retention manual (witnesses referenced a manual roughly “432 pages” long), local governments commonly digitize only a limited back‑range of records (witnesses cited digitization back to about 1951 in some archives) and agencies already have the ability under existing law to request clarification or to narrow requests.

Sponsors said they plan an amendment to replace mandatory language with discretionary language — changing an inferred “shall” to “may” — to preserve flexibility and avoid the appearance of shielding records. They also said local governments would continue to provide records, but the bill would allow different timing and processes for historical‑age materials (for example, scheduling in‑person inspections and limiting staff time spent pulling nondigitized boxes).

The committee took testimony in support and in opposition and then closed the hearing without taking a vote. No committee action or floor motion on AB152 was recorded at the hearing.

Less central technical clarifications discussed during testimony included that the state retention schedules are administered via NRS and NAC provisions cited during the hearing (witnesses mentioned NRS 239 and administered schedules), the common five‑day response timeframe under current public records practice, and an often‑applied seven‑year retention reference for some record types. Witnesses stressed that destruction of records in violation of law is already a criminal offense.