Geoff Lawrence and Anahit Baghshetsyan co-wrote a piece for Nevada Business on how to protect Nevada’s small businesses.
Geoff Lawrence and Anahit Baghshetsyan co-wrote a piece for Nevada Business on how to protect Nevada’s small businesses.
Director of Research, Geoff Lawrence, explains which industries might be affected by the incoming administration.
Eric Bihr, Director of Programs, recently provided an update on bills to watch for the 2025 legislative session.
Policy director, Geoff Lawrence, was interviewed about CCSD’s hiring trend.
Las Vegas Review-Journal article featuring interview with Policy Director, Geoff Lawrence
Daily Signal article featuring quotes by Nevada Policy President, John Tsarpalas
Interview by Nevada Policy President, John Tsarpalas
Op-ed for Nevada Business by Nevada Policy’s Eric Bihr
This article was originally published by the Reno Gazette-Journal
Politics are turbulent in Nevada these days. But engulfed in an otherwise raging sea of political cynicism, there now lies a unique opportunity during Nevada’s 80th legislative session for lawmakers to achieve a meaningful and long-overdue bipartisan success: civil-asset forfeiture reform.
Indeed, there is reason to believe 2019 may be Nevada’s best chance yet to end the systemic abuses of the law-enforcement practice which financially incentivizes police to seize — and profit from — personal property on the flimsiest of grounds, all while denying the property’s owner of the right to due process for its return.
For those unfamiliar with its ubiquitous abuses, “civil asset forfeiture” refers to when police seize an individual’s personal property based on the mere suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. Oftentimes, property can be seized (and ultimately forfeited) even if its owner is neither arrested nor convicted of any crime.
To top it off, law enforcement is entitled to a generous portion of the proceeds generated by forfeited property, literally creating an incentive to “police for profit.”
Most forfeitures are for tiny amounts, making it cost-prohibitive for victims to pay the legal fees necessary (if they can even afford them) to challenge the unlawful taking of their property.
In 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard Senate Bill 358, which would have minimized the lawlessness of forfeiture as commonly practiced. Critically, the bill would have required a criminal conviction to precede any forfeiture action. It also would have eliminated the profit motive by sending most of the proceeds to the state education fund, rather than law enforcement.
But despite its widespread and bipartisan support, SB358 never advanced out of committee.
The 2019 Legislature should now revisit forfeiture reform, especially because this issue should unite Nevada’s entire political spectrum.
From a right-leaning perspective, civil forfeiture presents major constitutional issues. Due process is upended by requiring victims to prove their innocence in order to get their property back. An individual’s personal property should never be taken and sold off unless a crime has been charged and proven.
From a left-leaning perspective, advocates for social justice should take umbrage with the fact that civil forfeiture disproportionately targets people of color and poverty, as documented by an NPRI study in 2017.
These facts illustrate that civil asset forfeiture is one of the greatest — albeit perhaps least acknowledged — civil rights issues of our time.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights agrees, noting in particular the necessity of public trust in law enforcement and its motives. Citing NPRI’s original research, the commission recently wrote:
“As in other states, law enforcement keeps a portion of this money [in Nevada], which creates an inherent conflict of interest. Public trust in the police is dangerously undermined when police are perceived to be acting primarily in their own financial interests, rather than in the interests of public safety.”
Reforming the laws which govern forfeiture can and should be a bipartisan affair, a seizing (pun intended) of the low-hanging legislative fruit. Here’s to hoping that Nevada’s 2019 Legislature recognizes a good opportunity for mutual success when it sees one.
Daniel Honchariw, MPA is senior policy analyst for Nevada Policy, and currently serves as its registered lobbyist for the 2019 Legislature.
This article was originally published by Nevada Business Magazine.
Transparency is an essential part of a representative government; without it, some would rule while others would simply be ruled over.
This is why the federal government and every state in the nation has passed laws that explicitly address the public’s right to access government records and information. For more than 100 years, Nevada has had some form of public records law on the books.
And it’s only gotten better with time.
Currently, the law is emphatic in declaring the importance of ensuring public access to government records and contains numerous mandates for how government agencies must respond and provide access to these records.
Unfortunately, it has one glaring weak-spot: the lack of any penalties for government officials who choose to ignore it.
Thus, despite the clear mandate for government transparency in Nevada, an increasing number of government agencies are brazenly deciding the rules simply don’t apply to them.
In October, for example, the Nevada Policy Research Institute had to sue the Clark County School District after it refused to hand over emails necessary to verify a former employee’s allegation that she had been unlawfully terminated after reporting test falsification within the district.
CCSD’s total disregard for the law was on complete display in its denial, where it simultaneously asserted that the requested emails were “confidential personnel records” while also citing exemptions from the federal Freedom of Information Act — which, of course, applies exclusively to federal government agencies, not local school districts!
Even if the district was telling the truth about some of the emails being confidential or containing confidential information, the law still requires it to disclose the non-confidential portions of those emails. CCSD, however, refused to do even that.
Now, of course, the district will be defending its absurd denial in court — wasting valuable tax dollars that should have gone towards students and classrooms rather than keeping taxpayers in the dark.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time CCSD has stonewalled attempts to shed some light on potential abuses — nor is the district the only government agency willing to ignore the plain language of Nevada’s public records law.
The Public Employee Retirement System has twice gone to court for attempting to keep secret the payout amounts it makes to retired public-sector workers. Other agencies too have increasingly adopted a “well, let them sue” attitude in denying records requests from the public, resulting in watchdog groups, news outlets and the general public with no effective way to keep their eye on government’s activities.
And it’s not hard to see why this trend is continuing.
After all, even if a denied request ultimately goes to trial, it can take years before the records are finally released, as the government is more than willing to spend tax dollars pursuing every appeal and stall tactic available to them.
And when the court case is all over, what happens next? Well, the agency shells out more tax dollars to pay attorneys fees, requests a larger budget for the next biennium to make up for what it spent on litigation and generally returns to “business as usual” denying future requests.
No lasting penalties for the agency, no ongoing promise for more transparency and, most importantly, no accountability for the government employees who knowingly and deliberately decided to ignore the law and deny the records in the first place.
When we taxpayers violate the law — even mundane or minor laws — we face penalties and sanctions. From speed limits to property taxes, citizens and taxpayers face a litany of potential penalties for failing to adhere to the letter of the law.
So why should government officials be treated any different?
The solution to the culture of non-compliance spreading through Nevada governments is simple, bipartisan and critical to ensuring state law is enforced: The legislature needs only treat the public records law like every other law and include penalties for those who break it.
That is to say, courts must be allowed to hold the government official who made the determination to withhold the record, charge an exorbitant fee, or similarly obstruct access in a bad-faith manner personally liable for the prevailing requester’s fees.
Only then will Nevadans receive the transparent and open government that has been promised to them for over 100 years.
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