Right before Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German was murdered, Clark County officials told him they would release public records he had requested regarding then-Public Administrator Robert Telles. German was investigating whether Telles and a subordinate were having an affair.
Around the same time, county officials told Telles and his girlfriend, Roberta Lee-Kennett, that they would withhold personal messages, per county policy, even if the messages were sent from taxpayer-funded devices and during work time.
German persisted with his investigation, and on Sept. 2, 2022, Telles drove to German’s house and stabbed the longtime journalist to death. After the murder, German’s colleagues asked the county to release the “personal” Microsoft Teams messages between Telles and Lee-Kennett, but the county refused.
A public records fight lasting more than two years ensued.
Finally, on Jan. 22, after Ben Lipman, the newspaper’s chief legal officer, sent a letter outlining why the messages were not private, the county released more than 10,000 messages from Telles showing the extent of the affair and the amount of work time and resources he spent to carry it out.
The county continues to withhold Lee-Kennett’s messages to Telles.
Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook said there should be no question that governments should be transparent about employee use and misuse of public devices and electronic communication accounts.
“Taxpayers foot the bill for all of it — employee time, the equipment, the IT infrastructure,” he said. “The public has every right to know how government workers are using these resources, whether they’re diligently completing tasks or literally screwing around. Clark County asserts there’s a secrecy carve-out for the least-productive employees who can’t be bothered to do their jobs on the clock.”
County counsel Lisa Logsdon wrote to say the county will not release Lee-Kennett’s messages to Telles unless they were work related.
“The County agreed to provide all of Telles’ messages to Ms. Lee-Kennett based on the unique situation and the fact that Telles was an elected official,” she wrote. “The County has already provided messages between Telles and Lee-Kennett that pertained to the business of the public administrator’s office, but the County has not agreed to provide Ms. Lee-Kennett’s messages as she is not an elected official.”
County denies records
In May 2022, German wrote a story about Telles’ leadership of the public administrator’s office. Employees accused Telles of being abusive and having an affair with a subordinate. The employees provided video of Telles and Lee-Kennett in the back seat of her SUV at a local outlet mall. One of the employees also filed two complaints with the county about Telles’ behavior.
In German’s initial story, Telles and Lee-Kennett, who both were married to other people, denied an affair.
During his murder trial, Telles testified he wasn’t concerned that the county would release the Microsoft Teams messages because he knew the personal texts wouldn’t be provided to German.
“So any personal communications between you and her wouldn’t go out to Mr. German,” prosecutor Christopher Hamner asked Telles on cross-examination. “Right?”
“That is absolutely correct,” Telles responded.
Telles admitted on the stand that he and Lee-Kennett were romantically involved when he was her supervisor. Unlike many organizations that prohibit even consensual relationships between supervisors and employees because of the potential for coercion, Clark County doesn’t have a policy directly banning the relationships.
After Telles’ arrest for German’s murder, county officials said they would withhold the records because they could be part of the criminal investigation.
“In applying the balancing test articulated in Donrey of Nevada Inc. v Bradshaw, 106 Nev, 630 (1990) the County has determined that the weight of nondisclosure outweighs the general policy in favor of open government due to the need to protect the investigative process and any related criminal proceedings related to Mr. Telles,” Logsdon wrote.
Lipman responded to Logsdon, saying the county was misinterpreting the law and using rulings that are no longer valid.
Under the Nevada Public Records Act, “unless otherwise declared by law to be confidential, all public books and public records of a governmental entity must be open at all times … and may be fully copied,” he wrote.
“There is nothing in the law that allows a governmental entity to withhold records simply because another governmental entity may have obtained or may in the future obtain copies of the records as part of that other governmental entity’s investigation.”
He also noted that the Donrey decision “has been overruled by subsequent amendments to the NPRA and Nevada Supreme Court case law.”
Privacy for murderer
After Telles was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, the newspaper again requested the Microsoft Teams communications between Telles and Lee-Kennett, figuring the county’s argument that they could be part of a criminal case no longer applied.
The county then changed its position to argue that employees’ privacy rights prohibit the release of the records, even if they used work computers and time.
Lipman again wrote Logsdon, saying her interpretation of the laws and rulings was inaccurate and that the records must be released under state law.
“We disagree that the County can legitimately withhold these records under the Nevada Public Records Act,” he wrote.
In 2023, the county appeared to be trying to be more transparent. Clark County Commissioners Jim Gibson and Tick Segerblom came out publicly to say the county should review its records processes.
The Review-Journal attempted to contact Gibson and Segerblom about the county withholding the Teams messages, showing up a public event last year when Gibson did not respond to phone messages. He said the county was discussing the issue and would likely change its stance.
“I really believe that we ought to err on the side of more, not less,” he said shortly before the county agreed to release the Telles messages. “But as it turns out, this is a legal thing, and we’re still talking about it internally. But when we resolve it, which I believe is going to happen this week, so it’d be on Thursday, this is the end of the week, and I think we will have determined what we’re going to do.”
Cook said it was heartening that Logsdon changed her position on the release of Telles’ messages after more than two years of resistance. However, he said he was disheartened that the county’s justifications for withholding the messages changed during that period.
“From the outside, this appeared to be another case where minds were firmly made to withhold records, regardless of the requirements of the law and regardless of how badly precedent needed to be twisted to give grounds for secrecy,” Cook said. “In the end, of course, there were no grounds at all for keeping these messages from the public.”
County releases some messages
In November, after Telles was sentenced, the county agreed to release his messages.
“As you know based on the Due Diligence Group, LLC v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department case and the Gibbons case it is the County’s legal interpretation that “personal” information even if an employee used a government issued device to create the information is not a public record under Nevada law, but the County understands your position and based on the circumstances in this situation the County will be providing Telles’ teams messages,” Logsdon wrote.
As part of the transparency push, the county had decided that rank-and-file workers had extra protections under the law, though that provision is not in public records laws or court rulings.
Previously, the county used that position to release an internal investigation of a deputy county manager accused of interfering in his son’s discipline at the public defender’s office. County spokeswoman Jennifer Cooper wrote that the county still believes personnel records are private, but that top managers and department heads “are held to a higher level of accountability.”
State law does not provide a disclosure exemption for personnel records.
The county took several months to review Telles’ messages before releasing them in January.
The records and subsequent interviews showed that not only had Telles spent considerable time carrying on the affair on county devices, but that when his staff complained about it, the county failed to look at those messages as part of the investigation.
David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, said policies and laws vary by state about whether personal messages on public devices are subject to open records laws.
“I believe that information of high public concern outweighs the individual’s privacy rights, and that is particularly true when the individual was using government-issued communications devices on government time,” he wrote in an email exchange with the Review-Journal. “That in itself merits public disclosure, in my opinion – they should be doing their job! Keep the personal activities on personal time.”
The “What Are They Hiding?” column was created to educate Nevadans about transparency laws, inform readers about Review-Journal coverage being stymied by bureaucracies and shame public officials into being open with the hardworking people who pay all of government’s bills. Were you wrongly denied access to public records? Share your story with us at whataretheyhiding@reviewjournal.com.
Reporter Katelyn Newberg contributed to this story.
Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com and follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is editor of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.
