Nevada Assemblymember Howard Watts said in an interview that the legislative committee he chairs will “absolutely” look into pursuing an independent audit into who was responsible for altering a key public record after a Nevada OSHA inspection of Elon Musk-owned Boring Company.
Fortune reported in November that a document in Nevada OSHA’s inspection file was altered after the agency withdrew citations it had issued to the Boring Company in relation to a safety incident at one of the company’s tunneling sites. The matter was an area of questioning in a hearing on Tuesday, where state environment and safety regulators testified before the Nevada Legislature’s Interim Standing Committee on Growth and Infrastructure. A senior safety official acknowledged at the hearing that the document was altered, but said the agency had been unable to determine who had changed it.
In an interview after the hearing, Watts, a Democrat who chairs the committee, told Fortune that the Committee would look into options to pursue an independent audit and understand what happened to the altered record.
“I think it would be in the best interest of transparency and accountability to have a third party do their own forensic audit,” Watts told Fortune.
Nevada OSHA, as well as the state government departments that sit above it, have come under scrutiny after Fortune’s investigation into the citations issue. Several people with deep expertise on Nevada OSHA’s process and rules have described what happened as a complete departure from OSHA procedure and as inappropriate. Federal OSHA is currently conducting an investigation into Nevada OSHA over its handling of the case.
The original record described a meeting that had taken place between a representative from Governor Joe Lombardo’s office, senior state safety regulators, and the Boring Company within 24 hours of Boring Company being issued two serious and willful citations following an incident in which firefighters were burned by chemicals in a tunnel during a safety drill. Boring Company’s president, Steve Davis, had called the Governor’s Office about the citations and set up that meeting, and the citations were rescinded at the onset of the meeting. Sometime after this meeting took place, a line item that had described this meeting in a public record was deleted from that document.
During Tuesday’s hearing, state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, a Democrat, pressed senior safety regulators over the document being altered, and underscored that altering, removing, or concealing information in a public record was a serious and potentially criminal offense.
“Some of my constituents that are very involved in transparency and public records are obviously going to be very concerned about how public records are potentially altered or go missing—and whether or not that’s prevalent throughout this agency or throughout the state,” Nguyen said.
Kristopher Sanchez, the director of the Department of Business and Industry, which sits above Nevada OSHA, said at the hearing that he personally requested that the Governor’s Technology Office do a forensic analysis on the record and said that his agency had also conducted one, but that those reviews “did not yield any results” and that they do not know “how that happened.”
When pressed, Sanchez specified that B&I and the Governor’s Office did not bring in a third-party investigator. He said his agency had not filed a criminal complaint or police report, as they were unable to identify who had altered the record. Sanchez said he did not have any kind of documentation, report, or memo regarding the forensic analysis and the methodology used.
“They are outside of our agency,” Sanchez said of the Governor’s Technology Office. “They’re impartial, and they are able to do those investigations. So I would have to defer to what they have and how they set that methodology and the tools in which they use to do that.”
The Governor’s Office declined to attend the hearing, according to a letter sent by Governor Joe Lombardo’s chief of staff, and thus did not respond to questions about it at the meeting. A representative from the Governor’s Office previously told Fortune in a statement that “no record was edited at the direction of me, the Governor’s Office, DIR, B&I, or any other entity I am aware of.”
In the interview after the hearing, Chair Watts said OSHA has been transparent about the forensic analysis, but questioned whether the reviews that had taken place were sufficient.
“We heard that there was not a third-party forensic investigation… So while we heard a commitment of looking into it and holding whoever was involved accountable, the people who looked into it were the Governor’s Office and Director Sanchez’s IT department,” Watts said. He added: “It is absolutely something that we’re going to be seeing how we can move forward.”
