LITTLE ROCK — “GAME, Fish chief contrite over law flap,” said the headline over the story about Craig Campbell’s banquet of crow before a legislative oversight committee.
“I exercised bad judgment in questioning any part of the FOI,” the chairman of the state’s Game and Fish Commission told the committee. Which was true enough. As far it goes, which wasn’t nearly far enough.
As for Craig Campbell’s public act of contrition, if he erred in his statement, confession and apology, it was definitely on the side of understatement. The chairman of Game & Fish hadn’t questioned just a part of the state’s Freedom of Information Act; he and his putative kings at G&FC had proposed to shred it.
Craig Campbell and seriously misguided company couldn’t have chosen a finer piece of legislation to ravage. For the Freedom of Information Act has been a bulwark of government of, by and for the people of this state since Winthrop Rockefeller and his dedicated crew cleaned up state government after years of Faugress.
The FOI Act is not only a statute, it’s a landmark, a milestone, a monument in this state’s history-and these jokers proposed to deface it. They didn’t just set out to augment their own power; they were proposing an act of historical vandalism.
The long and oft troubled annals of Arkansas contain quite enough instances of tricky games with the law, thank you, without this little Gang of Three adding to them. By the time they were soundly rebuked by the governor, attorney general and every other respectable source of opinion in this state, they richly deserved to be.
WAS THERE any part of the Freedom of Information Act, that historic achievement, which Mr. Campbell and his buddies at G&FC-and their lawheads-didn’t propose to waive for their own purposes? If so, maybe it was only because they hadn’t had time to get around to it. This wrecking crew was arrogance personified.
To quote Seth Blomeley’s story the other day: “Among other things, the commission’s proposal would have shielded records deemed by the agency director to be embarrassing to Game and Fish Commission personnel, as well as working papers, unpublished memorandums and commission correspondence . . . It would also extend the amount of time required for the agency to retrieve documents in storage from three days to 10. . . .”
Mr. Campbell and his buds proposed to carve out not just their own niche when it came to the state’s FOI Act, but their whole, arbitrary kingdom.
A little power can go a long way when given to little people suddenly given big titles, like Game and Fish Commissioner. In this case, it seems to have gone right to their heads.
To quote the church lady on the old Saturday Night Live shows, my, aren’t we SPE-cial?
Mr. Campbell now has apologized, but he left out the most important part of that apology, the two little words that guarantee sincerity on the part of any public official:
“I resign.”
Nowhere in this supposedly contriteapology do we find that only true warranty of its sincerity. Which reduces Craig Campbell’s apology to lip service.
For lagniappe, Commissioner Campbell did throw in a little bathroom humor when resolving never to mess with this good law in the future: “Ain’t no way I’m going to touch FOI,” he promised, “I’m going to have them issue an FOI release whenever I go to the restroom from now on.”
Please, Mr. Campbell, spare us.
This state had quite enough such jokes when Mike Huckabee was governor, and in many respects a good one, but The Hon. Huck did have a propensity for the scatalogical when making jokes. And turning the FOI Act into a farce for the benefit of a few little wannabe caudillos at Game and Fish is no laughing matter.
CRAIG Campbell did offer an excuse of sorts. (When, oh, when will those apologizing for a serious abuse of trust learn not to make excuses for it?) He said he hadn’t spoken about this power grab publicly because he’d trusted his fellow commissioner, Emon Mahony, and the commission’s chief counsel, Jim Goodhart, to answer most of the questions the press had raised about it. Because, get this, both are . . . lawyers.
If that don’t beat all! That’s no excuse, it’s Big Mistake No. 1: assuming that lawyers are experts at ethics. Law and ethics are two different fields of study even if they do overlap from time to rare time. Of the two, ethics is by far the more subtle, sophisticated and demanding discipline.
Indeed, perhaps the oldest definition of ethics recorded is: obligations beyond the law. To assume that Messrs. Mahony and Goodhart, Esquires, know anything about ethics, the principles and especially the practice thereof, merely because they’re lawyers is a sure way to wind up in hot water with the governor, the attorney general, the people of Arkansas, and, most important, with one’s conscience. Which is just what Craig Campbell did when he surrendered his ethical judgment to, of all people, a couple of lawyers. No wonder he owed apologies all around. (Here’s hoping he didn’t forget to apologize to himself, for he, too, has been poorly served by his behavior.)
As for Emon Mahony, whose degree is in law rather than ethics, he made the appropriate noises at this hearing, assuring one and all that he wouldn’t lay hands on the Freedom of Information Act in the future. “I’m through with it,” he said. “I’m not having anything to do with the Freedom of Information Act.”
He cartainly shouldn’t, but we’ll take Mr. Mahony’s apology seriously when he submits his resignation. Right behind “Counselor” Goodhart’s, whose counselin this case proved gosh-awful. As soon as he heard of this proposal to tear apart of the FOI Act to suit these tinpot commissars, he should have warned them against it-in no uncertain terms. SAP. Instead, he seems to have been the legal genius who was put in charge of this officious little coup-by-law.
As long as this Gang of Three is in its all too accustomed place at Game and Fish, the surest policy for those of us in Arkansas who value our right to know what’s going on behind those closed doors is:
En garde!
Editorial, Pages 20 on 11/26/2010