News outlets' right to train trench documents denied

On a 5-1 vote, the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled Reno can keep confidential documents detailing the cost of relocating businesses and buying land to make room for the city's train trench project.

That vote overturns a ruling by Washoe District Judge Jerry Polaha, who said Nevada's open records law requires those documents be open to the public.

It means the city has the right to keep confidential the specifics of purchase agreements between the city and 32 land owners along the railroad right-of-way and the deals to relocate 52 businesses to accommodate the project.

Those costs are contained in a nearly $18 million right-of-way and lands budget in the $280 million project.

The majority wrote that the 1989 Legislature adopted legislation agreeing to follow whatever rules are established in the federal Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act.

According to the opinion issued Friday, that act "plainly makes records involved in the acquisition of real property for federally funded programs confidential and not public information unless there is a law providing that they are not confidential."

The justices ruled that supersedes the Nevada law stating that all records are public unless specifically declared by law confidential. They overturned Polaha, saying the city has the right to keep the records away from the public.

Only newly elected Justice Mark Gibbons dissented from the majority. He argued that Nevada law "provides citizens with an unqualified right to access public records unless the records are declared confidential by law."

"Informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment," he wrote.

Gibbons said the trench projects is the largest and most costly in Reno's history.

"The city should be precluded from hiding behind a veil of secrecy in a project of such magnitude," he wrote.

Those voting for the confidentiality of the records were Chief Justice Deborah Agosti and justices Miriam Shearing, Bob Rose, Myron Leavitt and Nancy Becker. Justice Bill Maupin didn't participate in the case.