We’ve been doing something radical lately: reading.

Yes, we dusted off the Rules of Practice for the Second Judicial District Court — you know, the thrilling bedside material governing how things actually work over at the courthouse. And we went straight to Rule 2, because that’s where the magic of the Chief Judge lives.

That’s right, Chief Judge Egan Walker — we weren’t going to stop asking questions.

On Saturday, we put Judge Connie Steinheimer on the side of a milk carton — not as a stunt, but to make a point: the public deserves to know what is happening inside our court.

Once, in the bustling City of Reno, there lived a Princess of the Law named Connie. She did not wear a crown of gold; she wore a robe woven from thirty-four years of truth, and her scepter was a pen that had signed scrolls of justice.

If Chief Judge Egan Walker keeps this up, we may need to start reserving him a permanent headline slot.

Word around the courthouse is that Walker has reassigned — or as some are calling it, “hijacked” — a case originally sitting in Department 10 under Judge Kathleen Sigurdson. The case involves the parents of deceased 5-year-old Izabella Loving, and it is unquestionably one that will draw intense public and media scrutiny.

We received several calls last week from local attorneys asking the same question: had we heard anything about Connie Steinheimer, judge for the Second Judicial District Court, Department 4, being relieved of her docket?

Say what?

Last week County Manager Eric Brown took a vacation and left one of his Assistant County Managers in charge - seems like lack of transparency has a trickle down effect at Washoe County.

In what has become Washoe County's standard operating procedure, deflect, deny, hide the facts, officials sat on news of a deputy public defender's Las Vegas arrest for four days—miraculously finding their voices only when the Las Vegas Review-Journal prepared to publish the story. Apparently, the county's definition of "public information" is "whatever we can no longer hide."

Washoe County's January 28th Strategic Planning Meeting wasn't so much a planning session as it was a carefully orchestrated performance. County Manager Eric Brown paraded his loyal appointees before the commissioners in what amounted to an elaborate puppet show—department heads and direct reports dutifully describing a county running like clockwork under Brown's exceptional leadership and planning for the future.

The charade of commissioners directing the county's future course? Pure theater. At Washoe County, the ship sails only in the direction Brown charts, regardless of what elected officials might prefer. These are the same Brown-selected officials who crafted Commissioner Alexis Hill's presentation to the Nevada Legislature's Senate Committee on Government Affairs—the one where she boldly claimed a 40% reduction in homelessness, a figure so dubious it deserves its own category of creative accounting.

New Year’s Eve can be a lonely night, so we thought we’d spice things up for you with a local lawsuit that wasn't quite Netflix-worthy.

Pull up a chair for the legal soap opera that had Reno clutching its pearls in 2023-24: the York-York-Mathews-Guinasso spectacular. Picture it: Men's rights attorney Marilyn York, her father Ray, former employee Tirza Mathews, and attorney Jason Guinasso (bestie to both Commissioner Clara Andriola and Reno City Councilmember Devon Reese) in a lawsuit so juicy it makes Vanderpump Rules look tame.