The New York Times, July 13, 1975
Two news organizations are among those suing the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department claiming that government agency inhibits the flow of information by charging excessive and illegal fees for public records.
I know a little bit about this kind of litigation, and not just because I am a journalist who over the decades literally has filed hundreds of public records requests (including one for my own Las Vegas water records). Why? While still in law school, I brought a lawsuit like that against my New Jersey hometown–a half-century ago. I prevailed, too.
But rather than limit my case to arcane interpretations of state law, I had added a grandiose claim. Excessive fees many times the actual cost of producing the records violated the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. This had long been interpreted–even back then–as requiring that agencies of state government have a rational and fair basis for the actions it takes. Put another way, my argument was this: Unless the charge was expressly authorized to raise revenue–like, say, a sales or income tax–the fee had to be related to the cost of whatever service was being provided.
My case irritated some of the locals and got media attention, including an article in The New York Times (see nearby image). But before the matter went to trial, the governing body of my hometown, Haddonfield, N.J., backed down and amended its laws to reduce the cost of public record copies by upwards of 90%. There are lessons here for Las Vegas. Continue reading
There’s less than 10 days to go until our 250th national birthday celebration on July 4, so I’m running out of time. This is my continuing overview from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters of the entire financial history of the United States. In my judgment, this can be summarized in just three words: boom, bubble, bust. I recently described in Part 1, which you can 