Nevada Supreme Court allows access to state retirement records

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the public should be able to access certain reports in the state Public Employees Retirement System (PERS).

The Reno Gazette-Journal submitted a public records request to PERS in 2011 seeking the names of all individuals collecting pensions, names of their government employers, salaries, hire and retirement dates and amount of their pension payment.

The district court initially ruled that PERS had to provide the documents to comply with the state open records act, and the state Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling that PERS should provide the documents. The court held that the legislature did not mean to exempt that information from the public records law, and that PERS had not proven there were real privacy risks to releasing the document.

Individuals' PERS files will remain confidential, but information that is contained both in an individual file and in other documents is now considered part of the public record.

The court vacated the portion of the lower court's decision that would have required PERS to create new documents or customize records.