The College of Southern Nevada is invoking a convicted murderer’s privacy rights by refusing to release his work history to the public, records show.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has been trying for two years to obtain then-Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telle’s personnel records from the school. In the school’s latest response, staff wrote that current and former employees have a “non-trivial privacy interest in preventing an unwarranted invasion of privacy.”

Telles, who was a plumbing specialist at the school between 2008 and 2015, was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of murdering Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German.

After the arrest, CSN refused the records requestwrites that the Nevada System of Higher Education code prevents the release of employee grievances and discipline if they existed. That’s despite taxpayers paying Telles more than $70,000 a year in salary and benefits for most of the years he worked at the school. In 2009, taxpayers paid him $88,000, Transparent Nevada shows.

The paper submitted the request again on October 16 following Telles was convicted in August and was sentenced last month to life in prison for the murder. Again — other than giving the date of Telles’ employment — the school refused to release any discipline, performance reviews or complaints about Telles.

Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook said the school is siding with a killer instead of the public’s right to know.

“Contrary to what almost every state agency in Nevada claims — and how many laws, codes and court decisions they cynically and deliberately misrepresent — the personnel records of public employees are not confidential,” he said. “The College of Southern Nevada can release Robert Telle’s employment records. The college simply chooses not to, valuing the ‘integrity’ of a convicted murderer over the public interest.”

In the denial last week, CSN again cited the NSHE code and a series of decisions that it said give employees “constitutional rights to privacy.”

Administrative code cannot circumvent the Nevada Public Records Act, which does not have an exception allowing governments to withhold personnel records. Employees’ salaries and pensions are paid with taxpayer money so, transparency advocates say, the public has a right to know what the people they pay are doing.

“No categorical secrecy”

The audit journal’s general counsel, Ben Lipman, said the school is abusing court orders to improperly withhold public information.

“They take cases where the Nevada Supreme Court has said that there can be some limited information in personnel records that can be redacted while making clear that there is no categorical confidentiality for personnel records and have wrongly argued that the cases establish categorical confidentiality for personnel records. simply because there may be some limited information that can be redacted, he said. “They also refuse to consider the public importance of the information, which by law must always be weighed against any claim of privacy and, if it is important enough, outweigh otherwise legitimate secrecy, which in any case does not exist in this case. “

While many governments like the Metropolitan Police Department, UNLV and that Clark County School District have refused to provide key information about their employees, some agencies have made employment and disciplinary records available.

2020, Henderson Police released internal records of officers with repeated complaints. The documents showed that some patrol officers and supervisors were allowed to continue working or even promoted despite serious allegations of misconduct.

Last year, Clark County decided to release internal personnel investigations on top staffsay managers should be held to a higher standard. The county still declined to provide documentation of allegations of misconduct against lower-level employees.

CSN spokesman Richard Lake did not respond to requests for an interview or to provide a CSN employee to explain the decision to withhold Telle’s employment information.

“What are they hiding?” the column was created to educate Nevadans about transparency laws, inform readers that the review paper’s coverage is hindered by red tape, and shame public officials into being open with the hard-working people who pay all the government’s bills. Were you wrongly denied access to public records? Share your story with us at [email protected].

Contact Arthur Kane at [email protected] and follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is an editor for the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.