Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin received a third proposed set of changes to the state’s Freedom of Information Act after he rejected the second ballot proposal Tuesday.
Arkansas Citizens for Transparency (ACT) submitted a new draft Tuesday evening after deleting the two sections from the previous draft that Griffin said made it unfit for the November ballot, the nonpartisan group said in a press release.
“Given these sections were the only noted concerns, there is now no legitimate reason for the Attorney General to take any action but to approve, and to do so quickly, the ballot measure that now sits in his office,” ACT said in a statement.
Griffin took issue with sections of the proposed act regarding how officials must respond to public records requests. Not only would the proposal have required records custodians to contact the requesters and inform them whether the records are disclosable or not, but they would have also had to contact any public officials whose personnel records were requested.
ACT’s rejected proposal included “an attempt to expand the existing rules by affording private citizens the rights that are available to public employees” but instead “actually radically curtails the rules as they apply to public employees,” Griffin wrote in an opinion addressed to David Couch and Jen Standerfer, two attorneys on ACT’s seven-member drafting committee.
Griffin also noted that the ballot title repeats the phrase “To Protect the Privacy of Personal Information Contained Within Public Records in Which an Individual Has a Substantial Personal Privacy Interest” twice in a row.
“Aside from the repetition — which appears to be an oversight — the language does not come close to capturing the significant changes in the law that your text would create,” Griffin wrote. “As drafted, a public employee’s ability to be notified that someone might obtain their information is almost entirely taken away. And the private citizen would only receive notice if he or she were the one requesting the information. These two results are not consistent with the way you have summarized the measure.”
A primary goal of the proposed act, the drafters have said, is to codify a definition of a “public meeting” and broaden the legal definitions of a “governing body” and “communication” among members.
The proposal would also:
- Protect citizens’ right to appeal FOIA decisions and collect any resulting attorneys’ fees.
- Create the Arkansas Government Transparency Commission, with its members appointed by state elected officials, to help citizens enforce their rights to obtain public records and observe public meetings.
- Create stiffer civil penalties for violating the FOIA.
- Repeal Act 883 of 2023, which gave Arkansas school boards more reasons to go into executive session and allow more people to have closed-door meetings with school board members.
- Mandate that records concerning the planning or provision of security services to the governor and other state elected officials be considered public and accessible under the FOIA after three months.
ACT formed in response to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ signing of a law enacted during a special legislative session in September that shields certain state officials’ security records from public access. Sanders advocated for several more exemptions to the FOIA that met bipartisan pushback and did not advance in the Legislature.
FOIA initiated act proposal 3
The proposed act and a proposed companion amendment, also on ACT’s third attempt before the AG’s office after two rejections, both define government transparency as “the government’s obligation to share information with citizens.” Griffin wrote in his rejection of the first proposed act and amendment that a definition of the term was necessary.
ACT’s seven-member drafting committee initially sought to propose only an amendment but realized they would be best able to create enforceable government transparency policy by introducing an initiated act and an amendment that would support each other, they said in November.
The Arkansas Government Transparency Amendment would make government transparency a constitutional right in Arkansas and prohibit the Legislature from making laws curtailing government transparency without a statewide vote, with an exception for emergencies.
Couch, who is known for his work on ballot measures, said Monday that “litigation is imminent” after Griffin rejected the proposed amendment a second time. Drafters of proposed ballot measures have the option of appealing to the courts if the attorney general rejects the proposals.
Griffin has until Jan. 23 to approve or reject the proposed amendment and until Jan. 24 to approve or reject the proposed act.
With Griffin’s approval, supporters of the measures must collect 90,704 signatures for the proposed amendment and 72,563 signatures for the initiated act by July 5 in order to get them on the November ballot.
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