At A Glance
The Arkansas Freedom Of Information Act
Intent of the law and penalties for violation:
Arkansas Code 25-19-102. Legislative intent.
It is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner so that the electors shall be advised of the performance of public officials and of the decisions that are reached in public activity and in making public policy. Toward this end, this chapter is adopted, making it possible for them or their representatives to learn and to report fully the activities of their public officials.
Arkansas Code 25-19-104. Penalty.
Any person who negligently violates any of the provisions of this chapter shall be guilty of a Class C misdemeanor.
Source: Arkansas Freedom Of Information Act
Much of the email coming from or going to a tontitown.com address can be read by people who didn’t send or receive them.
Tontitown officials complied with three Freedom of Information Act requests for access to email by having a technician create an Internet portal to the email server, said Tommy Granata, the city’s former mayor. Granata resigned as mayor at the Jan. 2. City Council meeting.
“We had to redact some information before we gave them access,” he said.
Certain personal information about government employees is exempt from disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. That information should be removed from the requested document before its release, according to a handbook produced by the state attorney general’s office.
Mick Wagner, former executive director of the Springdale Water and Sewer Department, filed the first request asking for Internet access to email. Wagner asked for all email sent or received with a tontitown.com address between Jan. 1, 2011, and Sept. 3, 2012. That was 22,000 email, Granata said.
Wagner said he was given access to a portal to the requested email. The city took more than three months to comply, he said.
Alicia Collins filed the next request, asking for similar access to a smaller number of email. Collins completed an employment application with the city for the recorder/treasurer position. The application, which included personal information that should have been exempt, was emailed to council members, Granata said.
“I wanted to see if my personal information was sent to other people,” Collins said. “I do have access and can look at the emails.”
Collins worked at the Water and Sewer Department when Wagner was director. She was appointed recorder/treasurer at the Jan. 2 council meeting.
John Tull, an attorney with the Little Rock law firm Quattlebaum, Grooms, Tull and Burrow, filed the third request. He asked for email sent or received by the mayor from Jan. 1, 2011, to Sept. 13, 2012.
Tull’s attorney, Brandon Cate, filled a lawsuit against the city in late November, alleging the city had not complied.
Tull has represented Stephens Media and WEHCO Media in Freedom of Information lawsuits. Stephens and WEHCO own Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, the company that publishes the daily newspapers in Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers and Springdale and the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
City officials asked Tull to pay for the cost of checking for and removing the personal information, Cate said. The city waived that claim and agreed to comply with the request. The lawsuit has been dismissed, Cate said.
Creation of the portals is not difficult, said Ronny Thompson with Accio Inc., a Northwest Arkansas technology information company that runs Tontitown’s email server.
“It can take 15 minutes to two hours,” Thompson said. “If it’s a broad request with beginning and ending dates, it would take 15 minutes. The more specific requests can take a couple of hours.”
Attorneys for Tontitown then look at the email through the portal to remove exempt personal information before the person requesting the information receives access.
“The process of redacting information from emails can be time consuming depending on the scope of the request,” said Mark Dossett, Tontitown city attorney.
Sunny Hinshaw, council member, said she has not yet learned what the cost of the portals will be. One estimate, she said, was $5,000 spent so far.
James Larson, a Tontitown resident, said he was not as upset with the cost as with some of the requests.
“It would take you forever to read 22,000 emails,” Larson said. “This is not about reading emails. It’s about Mick Wagner throwing a tantrum because some things didn’t go his way.”
Tontitown is trying to reduce the cost of future requests for Internet access to emails, Dossett said.
“Going forward, we hope to be able to use technology to greatly reduce the time and expense necessary to review emails,” Dossett said. “City personnel will also be retrained so that potentially confidential information is not co-mingled with nonexempt information in the first place unless absolutely necessary.”
The application of the information act to email servers is not clear, said Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas Press Association.
“There is nothing in the act that says you can have access to a server,” Larimer said. “Remember, this law was first drawn up in 1967. There was no such thing as email at the time.”
The act has been updated over the years, Larimer said, with the public’s right to access the email of a government worker added. The right to access a server for all emails was not addressed, he said.
The application of the Freedom of Information Act can change through legislation, Arkansas attorney general’s opinions and court rulings, Larimer said.
“I don’t know if this was an attempt to establish a precedence with a court ruling,” he said of the Tontitown requests. “It’s an interesting point. A small change can ripple throughout the application of this law, however.”