03/12/07

Sunshine Week 2007

Ark. FOI gets mostly favorable response from public officials



By PEGGY HARRIS
Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- In Arkansas, when news reporters posed recently as "private citizens" to gauge how public officials respond to requests for public documents, they often were accommodated with a smile, sometimes treated suspiciously, and at least once waited for a copy under the watchful eye of a police officer.

The responses ranged from pleasant, prompt efficiency to confusion and long, unproductive, delays. In one rural county, a friendly employee said the supervisor in charge of the records worked part-time and "might be out feeding his cows."

When the reporter asked to speak to the person listed on the Internet as the office chief, the employee said with concern: "Oh, he's deceased."

The reporters were carrying out a nationwide exercise for Sunshine Week, coordinated by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to highlight the importance of open government and the public's right to know. The weeklong observance begins Sunday.

In Arkansas, the reporters went to local offices Jan. 18, unannounced and without identifying themselves. Each asked for the "Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan" for that local area. The public document is required by federal law, and describes the emergency response and evacuation routes in hazardous materials accidents.

Of requests made of 30 counties, two cities and the state, the reporters were given part or all of the document at 21 offices. Efforts at the remaining 12 offices were unsuccessful.

One official said the county didn't have to keep the plan; another government employee told the reporter: "We don't give that out to the general public." Others said the plan was being revised and wasn't immediately available.

One county official asked the reporter why the reporter wanted the emergency response plan, explaining that with the Sept. 11 attack, he couldn't be too careful.

"I'm not saying you're a terrorist," the official added.

At another office, a reporter had to remind an employee that federal law requires public access to the plan before the office would make a copy.

"While they were very polite, they did question me about my background, at one time asking me if I had been in the Army," the reporter wrote on a Sunshine Week questionnaire. "They did call the ... police department who dispatched two officers who stood at a distance and watched me until I left."

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, one of the oldest in the country, doesn't require that a person seeking public information provide his or her name or the reason for the request.

It also doesn't require the request in writing and it says that the public record must be provided immediately unless it is in storage or in active use, in which case the record must be made available within three working days.

Participating reporters wrote that, in the exercise, government workers often weren't familiar with the plan or they were uncertain of the law and the person in charge wasn't available. Some agencies said a request for the Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan was rare.

Most were accommodating -- one employee gave a reporter the phone number of the supervisor who was sick at home -- and some even seemed excited that a private citizen was interested in their work, reporters wrote.

Also, the reporters were rarely charged for copies, although the law allows a charge up to the cost of reproduction. And they were asked for their names usually, it seemed, out of general curiosity or out of courtesy.
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