The Little Rock Housing Authority board of commissioners voted Thursday to allow the agency's law firm to seek a declaratory judgment in an ongoing dispute with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette over document requests.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance will ask a Pulaski County circuit judge to determine what services the state's Freedom of Information Act permits a public agency to bill a requester for in readying documents for release, said the agency's attorney Mark Davis, with Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, LLP. The agency will also ask what kind of cost breakdown the law requires in providing the files to a requester.
The action comes three weeks after Rodney Forte, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance, was convicted in Little Rock District Court of failing to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.
Last fall, the housing alliance sent the Democrat-Gazette an estimate of $16,378 -- the cost, the agency said, of hiring temporary workers and buying extra supplies in order to comply with one of the newspaper's information requests.
"Before we hire temporary staff to copy the requested information and redact that which is needed to protect our tenants' privacy, we feel it is prudent to ask the court whether this cost should rest with the MHA or the requesting party," board Chairman Kenyon Lowe said in a news release.
Metro on 06/19/2015