Election updates, license plate readers and city hall controversies

This Is Reno’s Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad are back with a slate of big news items from the past couple weeks. We start with corrections from our last show before diving into election updates, expanding surveillance technology in the Reno area, local government accountability, nonprofit failures and high-profile cases in local court. 

Listen to this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, BuzzSprout and KWNK Community Radio at 97.7 FM every Sunday at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Note: This podcast discusses crimes of alleged sexual assault and may not be suitable for everybody.

Corrections and election updates
Two points from the previous episode about Reno's mayoral election rules and Jim Marchant's involvement in the 2020 election controversy get corrected. We then review finalized primary results, discuss several competitive local races heading toward the general election, and we comment on the extremely low voter turnout and what it could mean for November.

Sparks approves new license plate readers
The Sparks City Council's decision to replace Flock Safety license plate readers with Axon's platform drew considerable controversy. City officials argue the switch offers stronger privacy controls and greater local oversight.

The new Oddie Boulevard project is suffering
After residents raised concerns about neglected landscaping and unsafe bike lanes along Oddie Boulevard, city of Sparks officials said they lack resources to address maintenance backlogs. We suggest Sparks consider a permanent municipal goat squad to address vegetation concerns. Then we backtrack on that idea.

Proposed EV and hybrid registration fee
Washoe County officials are considering an advisory ballot question to add registration fees for electric and hybrid vehicles to help fund road maintenance. We mull fairness, declining gas tax revenue, alternative funding ideas and the challenges of creating an equitable system.

Tripling down on ‘Eddy Plaza’
The unnecessary but continuing controversy surrounding redevelopment proposals for Reno's City Plaza, reveals slightly modified, heels-dug-in messaging from The Eddy’s owners. Residents are encouraged to submit competing ideas for maintaining activation of the downtown space.

Rupert Murdoch court transparency case
The long-running Rupert Murdoch family trust litigation in Washoe County was opened to the public last week, but few actually attended the court hearing. We discuss the Nevada Supreme Court's ruling on the case’s being sealed from the public, the media's fight for court access and why public access to judicial proceedings remains important.

City of Reno’s new website features broken links and 404 pages
The city of Reno's newly launched website featured numerous broken links and missing pages, causing problems in finding basic information. Beyond the technical issues, we argue that government websites should prioritize reliable public access over cute features.

Reno City Clerk investigation
Reno City Clerk Mikki Huntsman was placed on administrative leave last week while an outside investigation is underway. We explain why we chose not to publish unverified rumors, emphasizing the importance of confirming information and responsible reporting.

Northern Nevada Literacy Council’s closure
We broke the news on the abrupt closure of the Northern Nevada Literacy Council, and it draws comparisons to other recent nonprofit failures. We discuss possible causes, including financial mismanagement, leadership challenges and the broader difficulties facing nonprofit organizations.

The Taji Hillson criminal case
We provide an extended update on the Taji Hillson case, reviewing the recent bail hearing, the prosecution's reliance on alleged confessions, possible false confessions and the presumption of innocence. We also compare the case with past wrongful convictions while discussing prosecutorial discretion and broader criminal justice concerns.

Listen to the podcast about Cathy Woods: https://www.buzzsprout.com/883765/episodes/4958240

Stay current on Reno news by subscribing to our free daily newsletter. https://thisisreno.com/newsletter/

This summary was generated with the assistance of AI and edited by us.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

All right, welcome back. Today we are recording on Friday, June 26th. I almost said Thursday. Uh, we were gonna talk yesterday, but I was rather cranky. I didn't want to. I was having a a little bit of a tantrum. Uh today is Friday, the June 26th, and we have a lot of a lot of stuff to talk about, but we also have some updates. So, Kristen, you want to uh talk about our boo-boos from our last podcast so we can set the record straight?

SPEAKER_03 0:34

So I was just out of control last time and got some corrections. Thank you for listeners keeping us in check. Um, the first correction, thank you, Naomi Door, for reaching out to us, arguing for Council member, Naomi Door. Council member Naomi Door, and not so much arguing as pointing out. Um, and she helped me do the research on this, but basically I said that you know, Kate Marshall, if she had earned 50% of the votes in her election, she would not have had to run in the general. She would have just gotten mayor. That is actually not true. Despite what state law and city code appear to state, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that mayors are essentially council members. And looking back at past elections, mayor Hillary Shavy earned more than 50% of the vote in the primary a couple of times and still had to run against Eddie Lorton in the general. So my mistake, Kate Marshall is going to be running against Kathleen Taylor in the general election for Reno Mayor. The other boo-boo, the other boo-boo that I had, and I mean, honestly, it's an honest mistake on this one. I think anyone could run into this mistake. Um, Jim Marchant, uh, we said that he was one of the fake electors trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election when Biden won. He was fake elector adjacent.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

He was there in physical and spiritual support. He did not, but he didn't sign.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

He didn't sign the fake document, but he stood there fawning in admiration over the signing. He was a key figure in election denialism. So you can see why I equate him that way. Um, Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who he will be running against in the general election, called him an unhinged extremist or something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

And you know the second election in a row, I believe, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Yes. And it was a lot closer than I think would be comfortable. It was a it was a close election last time. So I expect that to happen again. I wanted to also share what Nevada currents Hugh Jackson said about Marchant. He is such a no-nonsense guy with his commentary. So this is what he said.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

You gotta read you, everybody. He's hilarious. Whether or not you agree with him. He's pretty, he's a very colorful writer.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Yes. Um, so he said Marchant is a Trump or conspiracy theorist who believes the 2020 election was stolen by a planetary cabal that manipulated voting machines. He is one of several loudmouth conspiracy enthusiasts nationwide running for offices that will be in charge of elections, the better to make sure that the next time Trump runs for president, his glorious victory will not be deprived merely because of some extraneous technicality like failing to have enough votes.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

If he loses, is he gonna call this a fake election?

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Probably.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

No, I mean, based on his rhetoric and his behavior, I don't really know if it matters that much that he wasn't actually a fake elector. But, you know, we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I think that case is still winding its way through court, by the way. AG Ford is is going after that that group, not Marchant, because he didn't actually sign, he just stood there. I'm gonna I'm gonna be very bold, Kristen, and say he was just not fully committed at that point on that day.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

I don't know. We'll see how committed he is now. So just a couple of other updates on the election since our last podcast. So Kathleen Taylor came in with about 19% of the vote. So she is second in the mayor race, again, going with uh up against Kate Marshall in the general. And the question really on that race is will the people who voted for other candidates in the race go for Taylor or Marshall? Even if Taylor kept all of the votes in the primary that she took, and she took all of Lorton's, she actually still wouldn't top Marshall. So that'll be an interesting race.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And we could say for sure now that Lorton lost again and then yet another election.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

The Susan Lucci of Reno politics. Another tight race that's gonna head to the general is Matt Johnson versus Summer Pellet for Council Ward 2, replacing Naomi Doer. Um, they were just 214 votes apart. So this is really gonna be a tight race going into November. Washoe County School District, another tight race. Sheena Harvey beat out Brooke Westlake by 219 votes, which was really tight. Yeah. And then in um District 2, Washoe County Commission District 2, Mike Clark definitely lost his race. So it's down to Marie Rodriguez, the Democrat, and Republican John Killeran, who bested Mike Clark. So Clark is now not showing up to meetings, which could certainly be summer vacation. Everybody deserves a break in the summertime, but could also be sour grapes and the timing of it, we'll see. And then BCC District 5 is up for grabs because Gene Herman is termed out. So it's a three-way race. Um, unlike a lot of other races, this one actually has a third-party candidate. So Rob Pierce won the Republican primary for that. Brian Wadsworth is the Democratic candidate, and then Lisa Lee is on the libertarian ticket. However, she has said she's suspending her campaign. So we'll see if she gets any votes. But that's the final update on elections for the primary.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And I and I do want to apologize. We did not mention Brian Wadsworth in the last podcast, which we should have. So that was totally our oversight. So you you've got to race basically Pierce, Wadsworth, and Lisa Lee. I don't think is Lisa Lee still on the running? I think she is, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

She's gonna be on the ballot, but she said she's kind of suspending her campaign.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

You know, one thing we have not talked about, I don't think we talked about this last time, is the absolutely dismal showing in terms of voters for the primary. So a lot of these races are not as a slam dunk win as we might think because we had such a low turnout. And I believe if I recall correctly, most of those voters that did show up tend to be older and more engaged. So I think the the general election is going to be a wild card with respect to some of these races. I think reading the two leaves, I think you know, Marshall's looking pretty good for November for mayor. Uh, some of these other ones, I think it's too soon to tell.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

Well, and I think that this race was the specifically the district attorney's race was the race where it really showed that voting in the primary matters because and and non-party ticket voting, I think matters, which we don't have. But the Republicans who voted in the primary were the ones that got to select the district attorney, period. Um, that's important to note that you got to show up at the primary too. It's it's key.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Some of these results, you know. I I think as we mentioned last time, I I still think they they demonstrated that that people were not happy with the incumbents in key races, DA's race and uh maybe some of the others. And I I do think still that the voters sent a message in in the primary, but the voters that showed up, not the people eligible to vote. And frankly, you know, Northern Nevada politics is such that you know, we have a lot of frankly no or low information voters, thanks to a not very good news media ecosystem and people not really following local issues like they should and relying on TikTok videos for their information.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Our listeners not ours.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yes, yes. Okay, we've got a lot to to cover. So moving on, Kristen, I covered the Spark City Council meeting. I know these license plate readers are a huge topic of interest. We're gonna have say uh more to say on those in the in the hopefully near future. But the Spark City Council on Monday unanimously approved a five-year one million dollar contract uh to switch from their current flock safety automatic license plate readers to Axon. And we'll get into why that is here in a second. But we should note that Axon is also the vendor that supplies the body worn cameras. They are the vendor that uh does the fusis technology, which is the if you run a business and you have a security camera, you can allow the local police to tap into your security camera and review it for past footage, as well as dash cams. So that's all Axon. And City of Sparks chose to migrate its automatic license plate readers to Axon from flock safety. Now, before I get to why they did that and why it may might make sense in the the minds of some people, I will say there was overwhelming, overwhelming opposition to doing this, period. People are furious about flock safety and these license plate readers. I don't think many people know that what is happening with these license plate readers is that when you're driving down the street, the license plate readers are snapping images of every car that goes by. Anyone who has signed up for flock safety around the country can get access to this local data. And that is happening. Uh, we have some data that will demonstrate that police departments around the country are tapping into Sparks and Reno data and checking out what's happening in the biggest little city and its sister city. So that is very alarming to a lot of people. Some people spoke, many people spoke out against it. There was overwhelming written public comment against switching to Axon. But the city's point of view on this is is twofold. One uh police chief, Chris Crawford, said Axon is way better than Flock in terms of privacy and the ability to control data. So I think his point of view is this that basically you won't have these outside the state police agencies being able to just tap into Sparks' network of license plate readers anymore. And he can narrow the window window for the amount of time that others can have access to that. So his point of view is that it's actually a better platform because he gets to control the data and not have this data leaking out all over the country to who knows who for whatever reasons.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

You're still going to be surveilled, it's just gonna be fewer people have access to the surveillance of you.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes. And the argument for these this technology is that let's say a car gets stolen, police have been able to very quickly track those down and get people's cars back in into their own hands, at least as I understand it. So here's what Sparks police chief uh Chris Crawford said. He said Sparks police will own and control our ALPR data. Sharing is explicit, permission-based, and revocable. Sounds like probably a better thing than Flock, but if you're opposed to these things altogether, like most, I think every single public commenter was, uh, that may not satisfy you. There were issues or concerns raised about the constitutionality of this. I think this is being challenged, these license plate readers around the country in various locations. And the Spark City attorney basically said that the U.S. district court has upheld the constitutionality of license plate readers, and all courts have sided with the fact the Fourth Amendment does not apply here. I think we know why that is, is because there's no expectation of privacy in the public sphere. Meaning if you're driving down the street, people can take your, you know, photograph, they can take video of you, and that includes, of course, local police.

unknown 13:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

So they're not violating your privacy in terms of or by using this technology according to court cases.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

So I mean, I think there's definitely pros and cons to this whole situation. It's just a matter of, you know, how much how much responsibility are they going to take to you know preserve privacy and not let the data get into the wrong hands and to use it responsibly. And I think that the really the argument is about trusting government. I mean, I really I think people just don't trust the government.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

As they probably shouldn't. Yeah. I mean, that's the DNA of American history, right? Get out of here, you Brits.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

So you covered we covered another thing. Uh Michelle Baker covered another thing this week that we can't trust the government about, and that is to maintain anything it develops, I guess. I mean, we've seen this with we've seen this with the city of Reno and the community assistance center. Demolition by neglect. And now in Sparks, we've got this beautiful street project that was landscaped and created to encourage pedestrians and bicycles and beautiful bike lanes. Oh, it's gorgeous. It was.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

And they're now covered with weeds, debris, and overgrown shrubbery. Thanks. Garbage. Thanks to Nick and Christine Lee for contacting us. You know, I worked with them on a couple stories a few years ago. They they were they're uh, you know, retired and they live across the street from Paradise Park or nearby Paradise Park. They're sparks residents, but they do obviously come into Reno, and they were very upset about what they said was a lack of maintenance and upkeep at Paradise Park. And so they bought their own garden equipment and lawn tools to go fix the landscaping. The city of Reno Park, because the city doesn't have enough employees and resources to properly maintain their parks.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

And neither does Sparks, apparently, which is the problem with this stretch of Audi. And I mean, what's scary is that there's more work going on on Audi, the RC RTC is working on that's gonna have more landscaping, more bike lanes. And obviously, there's if there's not enough people to maintain existing areas, there's gonna be even more area to maintain in the future.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

And I mean come on, let's watch the video so people can hear for themselves what the issue is. Here's Nick and uh Christine talking to Michelle Baker.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

And I'm more concerned about the maintenance of this stretch of road. Since the 2024, I have seen virtually no maintenance. And hopefully I can demonstrate that today.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

We already took back paradise, might as well take back Audi.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Shrubbery acts that's catching garbage from the west to east road. We see homeless people hiding behind the bushes.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Oh that's that's been there a month, if not longer.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

You got a three and a half foot or bike lane turned down to 20 inches. Are you freaking serious? This is this is this is a big decomposing leaves and you know seeds and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

I mean, this stuff has been here for over a year.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Uh loves to contact uh the councilman, and he said he will put another work order in, but he his excuse is we don't have the manpower. We don't have the manpower. I think this thing speaks for itself. Somebody needs to get uh get on the ball and clean this place up. It's not enough just to file a request for service. You need to follow up. I want to maintain.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

I suggested that they contact contacted Green Vibe and Keep Trucking Metals Beautiful, but Keep Trucking Metals Beautiful came back where they use a lot of kids and teenagers under 18. And of course, for safety reasons, they cannot have them on a street like this, which it's not safe for adults on the street anymore. It's crazy. We almost got hit on 12th street. We've seen three places where they've ran through these walls, taken out trees. It's crazy. It's it's a death trap. I mean, it is in a lot of ways. We were coming home on our scooters and actually came very close to being hit. It was a three-car pilot and a motorcycle. Motorcycle was in the front, he stopped for us. We had the walk light, and three cars piled up, but they actually hit that motorcycle. And of course, I took off to the left thinking the motorcycle was going to hit me. And we stayed, we were witnessing.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

If you're walking through here, this is I get my eyes poked out, and that's uh money in the bank to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

You're riding that at night, and these cars are flying by you. It's a scary thing, it is.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

You know, I think they raise an interesting point that what is the point of micromobility improvements on this beautiful award-winning Audi project if people can't safely travel on these new lanes and pedestrian walkways. I mean, they they make a good point. And Sparks, like all the other local governments, had some pretty heavy budget cuts, and they're saying basically it comes down to lack of resources.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

You know, one of the things that Sparks does have going on, and Michelle's going out to get video of that as well, um, is the herd of goats doing the munching to prevent some of the vegetation that is prone to wildfire spread. And I'm kind of wondering if the city of Sparks just needs to invest in its own herd of goats to go over to Audi and some of these other areas throughout town. I mean, do we need like municipal goats that can do the maintenance that we can't afford to have people do? I mean, the goats aren't going to need purse, they're not gonna need health insurance. I mean, all of that, friends.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

They don't need to be elected.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Exactly. Although, I mean, I'm sure there's some hierarchy in the herd. But um, yeah, I think I'd be on board with that. I would I would be absolutely willing to have a small tax increase for municipal goats.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I think unfortunately running goats down Audi would be, you know, you'd end up with some uh colorful roadways there after they get after they get run over. Some some poor road workers can just sit there and just look at them, go, well, it was a good idea, I thought. We listened to this podcast. That is my witness. Run the goats down Audi while you're at it. And the drivers in the car were like, let's run down the goats on Audi.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

All right, so I can I can see now that this is a bad idea, terrible idea, but you know what?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Uh A for effort. A for effort.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

So here's another idea. This segues perfectly into the next bit, which is another idea that some people think is a really bad one, and that is levying a tax or a fee on electric vehicles and hybrids.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Jeff Church. We've been reporting on this since last fall, and people are just now discovering this is becoming a thing, Kristen. Yet again.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

Yes, and Jeff Church is still in EV Hell. He emails us every once in a while. He was in EV Hell when almost daily. Yeah, he couldn't find charging stations and they were all broken. And now he is very upset. You know, he he runs Reno Tax Revolt, is his his shtick, and he doesn't want to pay any taxes, any no new taxes. And what they're really looking To do Washoe County and RTC have discussed this. There's been studies, there was a Gwyn Center study and a couple others. And what they voted on this week, Bill Thomas from the RTC came and kind of presented why this could be an option to increase tax revenues to maintain the area's roads. So basically, even though gas tax is increased every year by a small percentage, it's not increasing at the rate of the cost of maintaining the roads that we have. So basically, consistently falling further behind in road maintenance in the region. And so one of the reasons is because even though the gas tax increases a little bit, you know, the percentage charged increases, we have fewer cars driving that use gas. And actually, the Nevada Independent today just ran a little fact check data bit on electric vehicle registrations and found that EV registrations over the past five years in Nevada have increased nearly 420%. It's a lot more EVs on the road. And I don't know if that includes hybrids, but that's a lot of vehicles and they're not paying any gas tax. So they pay their registration fee, which is the same as registration fee for any other vehicle, basically. And then they never pay any tax to support the roads. And yet they're driving on the roads all the time. And so the county commissioners on Tuesday approved to advance an advisory question to be put on the ballot in November saying Washoe County residents, would you be interested or willing to support a potential fee on EVs and hybrids to support road maintenance? That's all it is.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It's not a tax. It's not a tax.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

They're not asking citizens to approve a tax. They're asking citizens if they're in favor of a tax. And really, the legislature is the only entity that can give Washoe County permission to levy that. And really what they're looking at is a registration fee. It would be a fee that gets charged to people when they register their car. It can be anywhere from $50 to $250. Nevada's one one of only like 11 states, I think, that doesn't have any extra fees for EV drivers. So that's what got advanced. It's there's no new tax yet. There's there's a whisper of a potential in the future, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

You know, they're framing this as an issue of equity in terms of people driving vehicles and paying their fair share, regardless of the kind of vehicles. And I get that point. And I would just like to add to that that if that is the concern that people are not paying their fair share, are those diesel trucks paying their fair share when they get registered and all that stuff? I'm putting that question out there. Perhaps somebody can comment below, but they seem to have a lot of wear and tear on the roads, uh, well above and beyond any EV or even regular gas vehicles. So maybe we do a registration fee by how much your vehicle weighs.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Potentially. But you know, EVs actually, the weight of EVs, because they are heavier than regular cars, they don't actually put that much more wear and tear, like passenger vehicles, don't put that much more wear and tear than regular gas vehicles. But a couple of the people who are opposed to this did provide alternatives. They suggested that something more equitable might be a tax or a charge on kilowatt hours used to charge the vehicles, because that could be more equitable among EV drivers who are residents and EV drivers who are just traveling through. But they failed to note that EV drivers who are residents are charging their vehicles at home. And there's no way to differentiate between kilowatt hours spent running your fridge and kilowatt hours charging your car. So basically, they would not be paying a kilowatt per hour charge. It would only be at charging stations, which only would be affecting people who don't have a charging station at home, which are tourists. So not really equitable there either.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah, I'm not sure, frankly. I was being a little only a little bit facetious before, but I don't know if there is going to be a hundred percent equitable way to do this. But the Gwyn Center, they're the experts. So we'll uh take a look at what their reports say.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Moving along, the Eddie is back in the news.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

What you say? The Eddie?

SPEAKER_01 26:56

They're not doubling down, Kristen. They're tripling down.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

They're calling City Plaza Eddie Plaza now.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

They're coming down with the full weight of like five shipping containers.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And under the guise of saying, we hear you.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

We hear a little louder.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah, I don't I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on this, but uh there's been more. I mean, they they put out a they have a website. I'm I'm not even gonna tell you what it is, but you can go find it if you want with a myth versus facts. And most people on Reddit looked at their their myths and their facts and they're like, you guys are still full of crap. Like you're you're just constantly spinning this issue to redirect it back to what you're now calling the Eddie Plaza as being that's what we need in this community.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

So read the room, Kurt. Read the room.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, we'll be following this. And you know, I think speaking of equity, we should probably uh have some folks entertain their own proposals for how to activate City Plaza.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

I mean, the city is willing to accept unsolicited proposals. So I encourage all of those in opposition to Eddie Plaza um submitting their own unsolicited proposals.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

I've got one. We'll see how that goes. And by the way, I would I would uh offer the city uh you know more than a hundred percent increase on that one dollar of year uh lease or use fee. I would I would do 20. So I I think I should rise to the top just based on the economics of it. Okay, Kristen, I think next we need to talk about good old Rupert Murdoch. And I don't mean that in an age way, I mean that as a general statement, but he is on, I believe, 96 or 97 and still running the Fox News Empire. Uh Rupert Murdoch's legal team was in town this week on Monday. And for the first time, by the way, for those of you, and maybe this is a new issue, I I think locals didn't really resonate with this story, even though it literally has international implications in terms of politics and and news media.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

But Fox News is and we got an op-ed from someone in Australia about this.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

We did too, yeah, just about a year and nine months ago. So what happened just very briefly is just about two years ago, I believe it was the New York Times or maybe it was the Washington Post, uh had written that the Rupert Murdoch Family Trust case was being heard in a Nevada court. And pretty soon after that, it was reported that court was actually the Washoe County second judicial district court, and the case was not listed on the website. It was not in any of the case files, it may well have not even existed. So I went and looked on the court website. There was nothing there under Murdoch, you know, anything. And so essentially, word got out that it actually was being heard here, and the court tried to make it 100% secret. They tried to prevent everybody from even knowing about this case being heard here. We all know what the strisand effect is. Do you remember that, Kristen, from what was it, 2004? It was like one of the early viral kind of things that went.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

I don't think I didn't remember it. I actually had to Google it. And I thought it had something to do with her nose or her singing voice, but no, it had to do with her estate.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Mansion on a cliffside, I believe. And somebody had taken a picture of her her house and put it online, and she lost her mind. And what's now known as the Streisand effect is this idea that the more you try to make something, the more you try to put less attention on something, the more attention comes to it. And that's exactly what happened with this Rupert Murdoch case. The district court was forced to acknowledge that the case was in there in that court. And they put it up there, but they refused to identify anybody, any of the parties to the case, let alone their attorneys. I filed a media request to attend the court hearing, which was the trust court hearing, which uh occurred in, I believe, September of 2024, and was very quickly denied. And ultimately what happened is a bunch of news media companies sued over this, blocking the public from accessing this court hearing, blocking the public from accessing case files in the hearing, blocking the public from even knowing that this was happening here. It was the most bizarre attempt at trying to make this a secret thing that I have ever seen. Because surely anybody who's even remotely aware of basic PR principles or the Streisend effect or social psychology knows that you just can't do that without getting a tremendous amount of blowback. And that's what happened. I reported at the end of 2025 when all was said and done, all these media companies, uh, New York Times and PR, I believe Associated Press, I mean, tons of news publications sued. It went to the Nevada Supreme Court and in December, late December of 2025, I broke the story that the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the Second Judicial Court, by super sealing this entire case, basically violated everybody's constitutional rights of access to the courts. And it was a big blow. It was 100% predictable because there was a case in early 2024 that the Nevada Supreme Court had already ruled and said family court cases are public. You can't hide them because it involves your family. And by extension, that includes trust cases. So at issue here was Rupert Murdoch, conservative media mogul, probably one of the most powerful media people in the country, had an irrevocable trust for his entire media empire that would have split his assets among all of his children, which he has several. He really wanted the conservative nature of his media empire to continue well after his death. And the only way to do that was to revoke his irrevocable trust and try to give the power to uh his son Lachlan Murdoch. And by the way, if you don't want to listen to our version of this, go watch the Netflix documentary on this case. There's tons of great footage of the Washoe County Courthouse in there. It explains the entire story, the way the family was fractured and this, that, and the other. Long story short, Kristen, Monday was the very first time the media were allowed to be in this courtroom and hear the merits of this case. And at issue was really what was going to be unsealed and unredacted in terms of the trust files and the marriage agreement and all this other stuff. Rupert Murdoch's attorney still wanted to keep the trust confidential despite the Supreme Court ruling. And the probate commissioner, who up until he got smacked down by the Supreme Court, told them no. Unless this gets appealed again, which I think would be ridiculous, uh, you know, we should in maybe a couple months have some access to what happened with this family trust case. They did settle it, I believe, last year. So they're gonna split the assets among the children, but Lachlan Murdoch does get to continue operating the Murdoch media empire, which is uh fascinating case. Uh, I just, you know, we we opined on this issue and we said, see, transparency is not that difficult. It's just time consuming. It's what I mean, this is ridiculous. This whole thing of uh like trying to keep the public out of courts is just bizarre, and it's still happening in Nevada. I need to give a shout out to Luke Busby, who's represented us as uh our attorney in public records cases. He fought the battle for Alex Falcone. Also, I want to give him a shout out who runs our Nevada judges. Uh, Luke is not part of the Nevada Open Government Coalition, but Alex and I are, and we have been fighting kind of behind the scenes to not let this happen. I mean, we report on these cases when they come out, but Alex is always constantly trying to have to fight judges when they try to keep him out of courtrooms. His job is to go film court proceedings, and that's what he does. And it's, you know, he runs a great public online publication, tons of YouTube videos and court hearings all over the state. And he's constantly having to teach these judges that their courtrooms are not their private sanctuaries. All right, what's next?

SPEAKER_03 36:13

Um, well, this morning, my one of my thoughts was that the city of Reno is so unserious. So yesterday, you and I noticed, I think it was yesterday, possibly the day before, but it was this week, the City of Reno launched their new website. And usually when you launch a new website, you redirect your links. So if your page URLs change, you redirect from your old URL to the new URL. So that when people are looking for things on your website, if they have an old link, they get redirected to the new page where it's located. That's just standard. Apparently, no one let the city of Reno know that. And so, I mean, even they send an email earlier this week. I clicked the link for that email and it pulls up a 404 page.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

So even a 404 error, by the way, is when the information's supposed to be there, but it's not. And so you get this big 404. It's called a 404 error. It's kind of a I hate to say it, but a rookie maneuver when you get those. That means you haven't updated your your your links, and yeah, yeah. And so by the way, we probably have a lot of 404s on our website. So I'm not casting stones in a glass house here. I'm saying I can relate.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

And I think that, you know, people try and be cute with their 404 pages, which can be fun sometimes. But um, the city of Reno's cutesiness was sorry, the page that you're looking for isn't here. But if you want to play a tic-tac-toe game to find what you're looking for, click this link. And I just, you know, the city, the city is a serious government. And I know that they're trying to be fun, but when you're looking for information, if you're going to the city website and you're looking for, you know, business information, come on, man. It just just help me find the page.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

And we have tons of bookmarks for various government websites where we keep an eye on things because it's what we do and how we discuss things on this podcast. And I had to spend, I don't know, a good amount of time, easily a half hour yesterday, trying to update all my links and find the new pages. I even emailed the city manager and their communications person and asked them why they didn't create redirects for these pages. I mean, it hurts their own SEO. This is not just me complaining. It's there, yeah. It's gonna hurt them too.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Well, I did a Google search this morning for something, and Google brought up the responses and said, click here for this page, and I clicked it and I got a 404. You can't even click through a Google link to find what you're looking for on the website. You have to just go to the website and sort through the pages.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

So a lot of extra work for whatever reason we don't know yet.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

New website.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

We have a plugin that takes care of that for us. It's really quite neat. You just if a link changes, it says, Do you want to serve up a you know deleted content error or redirect to another page? You put in the new URL and go to the new page and Bob Drunkle.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

All right. So other city news this week.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

City clerk Mickey Huntsman was placed on leave. And I'm not sure that's even the the main point here, but it is it is a news story. I mean, we were contacted by no less than three anonymous sources, I believe three known sources, nobody who would talk on the record, saying um that she was placed on leave by the mayor on Monday.

SPEAKER_03 40:01

And, you know, one of those sources was actually a little hostile saying, do your job and report on why she's out. And, you know, I think we did our job and we put out a story, but what we didn't do that I think this commenter uh wanted us to do was to report on some of the rumors and the hearsay, but we weren't able to verify any of that. And so we didn't report on it because it may not be true.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

I I think people need to understand that I know there are other, I'm not sure what you would call them, publications or media, social media presence, you know, uh outlets or whatever you would call them out there that that constantly are reporting and sharing rumor and induendo uh as if it is fact. I I think most people who have received a modicum of training in journalism will understand why that's problematic, which is it doesn't really give people a fair shake. I think it is topical and newsworthy that the city clerk who is in charge of public records and election things and all that at the city gets placed on leave and there is an HR investigation, which we did confirm. I don't think that implies any guilt necessarily yet. And we can't report and we will not report on rumors, even if more than one person says they're true, unless we can verify them with some kind of official documentation. That's fair to those people, it's fair to our readers, and it's uh it protects us from you know being sued or being threatened with litigation unnecessarily for reporting on things that we can't substantiate. That's kind of the golden rule in journalism. And I I think you can kind of tell these social media accounts, you can kind of tell that they haven't been trained or have any journalism education because they're doing a lot of things like that, or they're republishing other people's images or videos without attribution or credit or things like that. And they they just kind of do these like really rookie maneuvers that most reasonably educated journalists should not be doing and hopefully would not be doing. And I think there's that expectation that we would do that because people see that elsewhere online. And I would say if you're seeing that, then you might want to follow publications or accounts with better standards that are fair to people.

SPEAKER_03 42:33

So I mean, that said, if we are able at some point to substantiate any of the things that we've been told, then we will be reporting on it.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

100%. Yeah. Yeah. If we can verify some of the rumors that were shared with us, we will uh most certainly do that. And what we were told is that the uh there was a complaint received, and this is Reno Mayor Hillary Sheeve. He said that the city received a complaint pertaining to the city clerk and consistent with city policies and procedures, the complaint was routed to human resources. And then I believe at that point the Reno City Attorney's Office has hired a firm to do an investigation into those that complaint. And it's fair due process to I think all parties involved to suss out what those complaints are. I do hope that this is made public, similar to what happened in the Andrew Klinger case many, many years ago and some of the other things that we've seen coming out of City Hall. But once again, at City Hall, we're we're having some concerns with employees and things happening. So not sure what else to say about that, but yeah, there we are. Let's talk about the Northern Nevada Literacy Council. We broke the story this week that that organization has essentially imploded as of Thursday, the 25th. They closed their doors. Uh, this nonprofit has been around since. Since 1978. It's provided education to people for decades. And apparently the executive director was terminated months ago. And we learned recently that they were shuttering their doors. We again don't know specifically, but we do have good reliable information that there are allegations of financial mismanagement. Theoretically, some investigations are an investigation or something happening as a result of that. I think it's kind of a repeat of what we saw nearly a year ago, Kristen, with the Trucking Meadows Parks Foundation. Do you want to refresh our memory?

SPEAKER_03 44:41

Yeah. So the Trucky Meadows Parks Foundation had another, they also had a very kind of abrupt closure and it was supposed financial hanky panky, I guess. The executive director was kind of the scapegoat finger pointing that she had mismanaged the money. They had no money. They weren't sure they were even going to be able to pay employees that week. So the board of directors shut it down. Everyone went scrambling. There was an investigation. I have no idea what the results of that investigation were. I think it was a police or federal agency because agency investigation because they did receive federal funds. So not sure what the outcome of all of those investigations were, but yeah, it was also a very sudden nonprofit closure for fiscal mismanagement, which, you know, that's that's at least three organizations in the space of just a few years that are pretty prominent. I mean, Northern Nevada Literacy Council is where people go to, they can get their, they could have gotten their GD there. People who um speak English as a second second language could learn English there. Trucky Meadows Parks Foundation was all over the place. And then the year before that was um Immunized Nevada. Really unfortunate that some of these organizations are having these issues. And I don't know if it's really just, you know, people in management positions who don't know how to manage the money, if it's some sort of, you know, criminal intent, or if it's just, you know, cutback of grants and funding that causes people to scramble and lose control.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

I think there's a phenomenon in in organizations, and I don't know if this is universal, but I've certainly seen it a lot in Reno, having been here for some time. And I I think there's a tendency to want to hire people who have on the surface qualifications or some kind of brand name presence that uh gets them into various jobs. And at the end of the day, I don't think that's always a wise way to go because you end up hiring people that may have questionable qualifications and may not be as savvy as running at running organizations as they may present themselves to be. I think a good example is, you know, uh, I work at the university and and I've seen I've seen it happen where a professor who's very popular uh gets advanced into, let's say, a minute an administrative position. Well, being a popular and very skilled and very successful professor is not the same skill set as managing an academic unit. And I think there's an assumption that one translates into the other.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

It does not. Stick to your strengths, people. Stick to your strengths.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

And and I see that. We see that in local governments a lot too. People get advanced into positions that really have no business being in them, or they come from, you know, maybe they were in a leadership position in one type of organization, and then they get into a higher position in another organization, but they really aren't the same kind of things. And so I think there's a lot of poor leadership in this community. And I think, and I'm not saying necessarily that's the case here with the NNLC, but it appears that we we do have some concerns with how a lot of these local organizations are being run.

SPEAKER_03 48:32

Yeah. And you know, kudos to the people who realize that they're in the wrong position and get out. Eric Edelstein, I still think about him sometimes. You know, he he went from the Reno Aces over to the city of Reno and took an assistant city manager position, which seems like it might be a great bump, but he realized, you know what, this isn't right for me. I'm going back to baseball. And he did.

SPEAKER_01 48:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

Good for him.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

I don't know the circumstances of that, but I I've I've met Eric. He's always been a really super nice guy and great to work with. So I don't know what happened in his case, but you may you may be exactly right. Okay. Uh, shall we talk about the Taji Hilson case, Kristen? Sure. You know, I've been following this case for, I guess, a couple months now. And for those of you who don't know, Taji Hilson was a part-time PE teacher at a local elementary school. And she got arrested about a year ago for allegedly admitting to uh abusing her her own daughter. And I don't want to get into all the details and the back and forth of this case. You can go read our reporting on it. I did put a about a almost 45-minute video up on YouTube uh of the most recent hearing. I attended a bail hearing in the case uh last week. And I'll I'll just give the very high-level overview. So the daughter's alleging that the mom has essentially abused her over the course of decades. And the defense attorney for the mom said, Well, the daughter came to the realization of this alleged abuse via a psychic medium uh and this um omniscient being called Yeah, infinite intelligence. Infinite intelligence. And and uh what the mom supposedly confessed to in in confessing to the alleged abuse, supposedly recited what the daughter had said she received from infinite intelligence. And the DA's office perspective is well, if she didn't do it, why she admit to it? And what happened at the bail hearing, so Taji Hilson has been in jail for nearly a year, I think since July of 2025, on a $5 million bail. And she has on her pretrial risk assessment form a rating of a zero, meaning her her flight risk is zero. However, the judge noted that supposedly the dad, so Taji Hilson's husband, had made some comments about fleeing if she were to get out of jail. I don't know that to be the case. I think that's part of the reason why there's such a high bail. But when all was said and done at the end of this hearing, the judge reduced the bail down to 4 million. I don't think that necessarily made an improvement. And I think she's probably still in jail as we speak. I will say this, though, about this case. I think the evidence that has been presented to date is lacking in specificity and lacking in detail. And I think basing this entire case on supposed confessions, from what I know so far, I think is is kind of scary, frankly. And the reason I say that is you may remember about five or six years ago, we reported on Kathy Woods. And for those of you who may not know who Kathy Woods is, Kathy Woods, in I want to say the late 70s, confessed to murdering Michelle Mitchell right across the street from UNR to murder this young college student. She was arrested, she was tried, she confessed to the crime, and she spent most of her life in prison. Well, only by happenstance did it come out that DNA evidence exonerated her in this case and basically proved that she could not have committed this murder. And I'll drop a link in the notes of the podcast. You can go listen to my interview with uh former Arena Police Lieutenant uh Jay Andre Bowles, who wrote a whole case or a whole book about the Michelle Mitchell murder. It's called uh The Monster on Gypsy Hill. And it's about the actual person who they believe was the killer of Michelle Mitchell. Here's where it gets awfully, I mean, that's why this kind of case is so perplexing is Kathy Woods confessed to this. And it turns out she had very severe schizophrenia. And it really raises the point of why people would falsely confess to crimes they didn't commit. In doing some research into the Taji Hilson case, because you know, if you look at the Taji Hilson case from the lens of like the most simple explanation for what is happening here, Occam's razor, it could be a case of a false confession. And that's at least what the defense is, I'm guessing, arguing subtly. I don't think it's been a direct claim just yet, uh, but we may hear more. False confessions are common. Yeah, fairly common. And unfortunately, what's also common is that prosecutors and judges don't seem to know that across the board. Uh, there's a great article in Psychology Today from, I believe, last year, sorry, from this year in April, and it's called Why False Confessions Are Surprisingly Common Common. An admission of guilt is not proof of guilt, is what this author, uh, Dr. Jeffrey Davies Carl uh wrote. And he said that there's several reasons why people falsely confess to crimes. And I think, you know, some of the people who have read our reporting on Taji Hilson don't seem to understand is that this is common. And this is why somebody would falsely confess. I mean, there's there's psychological reasons why they would confess, there's uh motivational reasons, there could be pressure from police in a lot of cases. I mean, there's tons of famous cases of false confessions. But the point being is that they're fairly common, and I don't think people really understand that. That could be what's happening here. And if that's the case, I think really the defense is going to be uh, you know, a term called corpus delecti, which I'm gonna just read a quick quote from U.S. Law Explained, which is a website. Corpus delecti is a term, a Latin term that literally means the body of the crime. It's a foundational principle in American criminal law that protects you from being convicted based on your words alone.

SPEAKER_03 55:32

So you need to have corroborating evidence along with a confession.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

It forces the government to show concrete independent evidence that a crime actually happened before they can use your confession against you. It is the legal system's way of preventing convictions for crimes that never occurred, often based on coerced or false confessions.

SPEAKER_03 55:52

So there's a potential that this could be this concept could be used because I mean, really the only independent evidence that a crime occurred is recollections from a psychic medium.

SPEAKER_01 56:10

That we know of. Right. Yeah. Though I will say the one thing that is very alarming about this case is that the DA's office is still to this day, or at least prior to this court hearing, asserting that there were multiple victims.

SPEAKER_03 56:23

Even though the police cleared that.

SPEAKER_01 56:25

The daughter via the psychic medium also alleged several other victims that the mom allegedly abused, including her brother and some cousins. And every single person has denied that. And the defense really noted that. And she said that the DA's office is advancing false narratives, and she even threatened possibly defamation if it continued, some kind of legal action.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

And you know, I've been reading some of the comments on our posts about these stories, and it's interesting because a lot of people are like, oh, you know, I'm glad that she's still in jail for that kind of a crime. You know, people don't like crimes committed against children, neither do I. But the worst, you know, people all think, you know, keep her locked up. That's where she belongs. And A, you know, she hasn't been convicted of this. And B, they I don't think have read anything about the the circumstances of her being kept in jail. So yeah, it's a very heated discussions online about this case. I will be interested to see.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

I will say a lot of those discussions, people have not read the same court documents I've read. No, they're really they're literally advancing what the DA's office said a year ago when they arrested this woman. I want to I want to read a quote from the judge about why uh what's going on as far as her still being in jail. District court judge Lynn Jones uh made a very interesting statement, and and it was actually something what she said I was not aware of. And she said, Miss Hilson enjoys the presumption of innocence at this juncture. The thing that I go back to is the nature of the offense, and the language is really clear that it is the nature of the offense that is charged. It's not whether or not the offense is proven at this juncture. Think about that, Kristen. You're essentially presumed guilty until you're not. And I find that very almost contradictory to what we think we know about the criminal justice system.

SPEAKER_03 58:38

Yeah, it's the exact opposite of what we what we've all been led to believe about the criminal justice system, that you're innocent until proven guilty, unless the nature of the crime is such that we decide to lock you up indefinitely until we can get to your case.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

I think that's that, I mean, there's so many disturbing things about this this case. And, you know, we wrote uh a week ago an editorial about this. And, you know, I think our point was regardless of what ends up being the case in the Todgy Hilson criminal trial and what the outcome may end up being, what we can say is that there appears to be a disturbing lack of continuity in the standards for what cases get charged and zealously pursued by the DA's office versus those that do not.

SPEAKER_03 59:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

And we talked a lot about Kimberly Mole, who went to the police after she said she was raped, provided, you know, did the whole examination, provided all the statements, was called a cooperative witness, you know, and so on and so forth, said everything that that had happened. According to her, the police even interviewed the man she said she was raped by, and he even admitted to continuing to have sex with her after she said no. And the DA's office refused to prosecute her case, and she said they didn't even tell her that until the statute of limitations had run out. She then becomes an advocate and has uh said she helped get laws passed to show that or to extend the statute of limitations on these kinds of cases to 20 years rather than three, and that victims have a right to the results of their test results after, you know, rape kits and and all that. So, and I would also add that it's not even in situations of of sexual abuse that it appears the DA's office has sort of a selective process for choosing what to prosecute. It's happening in murder cases and some other things that we'll be covering in the future. I don't know what's going to happen when Wes Duncan gets in, but I do know, as we've talked about in the past, that he will be coming in to review some of these cases. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for for listening. We do appreciate uh everybody for paying attention. We are doing our best to stay on top of all the important local news here in the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

Thank you for sending your uh corrections, um, hats off to those who let us know when we are wrong. We will let you know when we're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

All right, everyone. Have a great one.