Key Nevada lawmaker says lawmakers will push for independent audit of changed public record in Nevada OSHA Boring Company inspection

Nevada Assemblyman Howard Watts said in an interview that the legislative committee he chairs would “certainly” consider pursuing an independent audit to determine who was responsible for altering a key public record following a Nevada OSHA inspection of Elon Musk’s Boring Company.

luck It was reported in November that the document in the Nevada OSHA inspection file was changing after the agency withdrew the citations it issued to The Boring Company in connection with a safety incident at one of the company’s tunnel sites. The matter was an area of ​​question in A Hearing is on Tuesdaywhere state environmental and safety regulators testified before the Nevada Legislature’s Interim Standing Committee on Growth and Infrastructure. A senior safety official acknowledged during the hearing that the document had been modified, but said the agency was unable to determine who changed it.

In an interview after the hearing, Watts, a Democrat who chairs the committee, said luck The Committee will consider options for conducting an independent audit and understanding what happened to the amended register.

“I think it would be in the interest of transparency and accountability for a third party to conduct its own forensic audit,” Watts said. luck.

Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as the state government departments above it, came under scrutiny afterward luck‘s investigation In the matter of citations, several people with deep experience in Nevada’s OSHA process and rules described what happened as a complete departure from OSHA procedures and inappropriate. Currently federal OSHA Conduct an investigation to Nevada OSHA regarding its handling of the issue.

The original log describes a meeting held between a representative of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office, the state’s top safety regulators, and The Boring Company within 24 hours of The Boring Company issuing two serious and malicious citations following an incident in which firefighters were burned by chemicals in a tunnel during safety drills. The Chairman of The Boring Company, Steve Davis, contacted the Governor’s Office about the citations and set up this meeting, and the citations were canceled at the beginning of the meeting. Sometime after this meeting was held, the item describing this meeting in public record was deleted from this document.

During Tuesday’s hearing, state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, a Democrat, pressed top safety regulators about amending the document, stressing that changing, removing or concealing information in the public record is a serious and potentially criminal offense.

“Clearly some of my constituents who are very involved in transparency and public records are going to be very concerned about how public records change or disappear — and whether or not that is prevalent throughout this agency or throughout the state,” Nguyen said.

Christopher Sanchez, director of the Department of Business and Industry, which sits above Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said at the hearing that he personally asked the governor’s technology office to conduct a forensic analysis of the record, and said his agency also conducted one, but those reviews “yielded no results” and that they don’t know “how it happened.”

When pressed, Sanchez explained that B&I and the governor’s office did not bring in a third-party investigator. He said his agency did not file a criminal complaint or police report because they could not determine who changed the record. Sanchez said he does not have any type of documents, reports or memos regarding the forensic analysis and methodology used.

“They’re outside of our agency,” Sanchez said of the governor’s technology office. “They’re impartial, and they’re able to do those investigations. So I have to rely on what they have and how they put together that methodology and the tools that they use to do that.”

The governor’s office refused to attend the session, according to A letter It was sent by Gov. Joe Lombardo’s chief of staff, and thus he did not respond to questions about it at the meeting. A representative of the former governor’s office He said luck in a statement that “no record was released at the direction of me, the Governor’s Office, DIR, B&I, or any other entity of my knowledge.”

In the interview after the hearing, Chief Watts said OSHA had been transparent about the forensic analysis, but he questioned whether the reviews conducted were adequate.

“We heard that there was no third-party criminal investigation…so while we heard a commitment to look into the matter and hold everyone involved accountable, the people that looked into the matter were the governor’s office and Director Sanchez’s IT department,” Watts said. “It’s definitely something we’ll see how we can move forward,” he added.

This story originally appeared on Fortune.com