LITTLE ROCK — The only e-mail turned over to the state Republican Party so far as a result of its request for records of two state employees does not indicate that they wrote on their liberal blog while they should have been working.
The subject of the e-mail to a court reporter: whether it would be better to use a comma or a semicolon.
The party this week asked public agencies for employment, e-mail, phone and other records of Matt Campbell and Jeff Woodmansee and said it was trying to find out whether they, as the agencies’ employees, conducted partisan activity on the state’s dime.
Both have said they didn’t.
Campbell is a staff attorney in the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office of the state Supreme Court. Woodmansee is an information services specialist in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law library.
They founded the Blue Hog Report blog last year. In recent months, Woodmansee has posted on it only occasionally, and Campbell has written frequently, with several of his posts criticizing Secretary of State Mark Martin and lawmakers.
Campbell accused Martin and others of using state vehicles for commuting. He cited gasoline credit-card receipts he obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. A spokesman for that office said Campbell was mistaken.
Campbell decided Thursday to shut the blog down, at least for now.
Th e s tate Su p re m e Court’s response to the GOP’s Freedom of Information Act request said that most of Campbell’s e-mails are exempt from the disclosure requirement because they discuss cases that have reached the court, a court spokesman said.
Under Arkansas Code Annotated 25-19-105 (b), records that are exempt from disclosure include “unpublished drafts of judicial or quasi-judicial opinions and decisions” and “unpublished memoranda, working papers, and correspondence of the governor, members of the General Assembly, Supreme Court justices, Court of Appeals judges, and the attorney general.”
Even if a justice is not involved in the e-mail conversation, “where [Campbell]is discussing cases or issues before the court, that’s exempt,” said Stephanie Harris, the spokesman.
The court turned over the one e-mail about the comma, plus a phone log, a purchase order for new desktop computers for Campbell and three other employees, and Campbell’s leave requests.
Campbell does not have a state-issued credit card and he does not drive a state vehicle, so there are no records for those to give to the GOP, Harris said.
The court turned over about 82 pages, including its employee handbook, said Katherine Vasilos, a GOP spokesman. The Pulaski County Public Defenders office, where Campbell worked for about three years, turned over 92 pages, but said Campbell’s e-mails were saved on a state server and they will have to be requested fromstate officials.
So far, UALR , where Woodmansee works, has not released any records, Vasilos said.
“We believe Mr. Campbell has violated state law, in particular the general policies of the employee handbook of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, which states that no political activity should occur during working hours with state equipment or on state property,” Vasilos wrote in an e-mail Thursday.
Though the party is still looking at the records, Executive Director Chase Dugger pointed to the timing of posts on the blog and elsewhere.
“Sure, a lot of it could have been done after hours, on lunch break, or on days that he took off. But there’s alot of it that appears to have been done while sitting in a state office on a state computer,” Dugger said.
Campbell said that he wrote for the blog only during his off hours and lunch breaks and always from a personal computer or phone. He said he often used a feature of his Wordpress site to schedule blog posts so they would appear throughout the day while he was at work. He said four people had access to the blog’s Facebook account and could have made comments at any time.
The court’s employee handbook prohibits employees from working for campaigns or participating in political activities while on duty or using state equipment. Employees are encouraged to be politically active during their free time, but the handbook cautions them to be “sensitive about activities” as “members of the judicial branch.” CRITICS
Some said the GOP’s tactic was a threat to open dialogue, and they contended that the party was using the law to intimidate and silence its opponents.
Dugger said that’s “crazy.”
“There have been multiple liberal bloggers out there that we don’t agree with. There have been several articles in the Democrat-Gazette and several news stories on all the news stations at night that we don’t agree with. And we’ve never I guess what you’d call intimidated anyone else,” he said. “To say that we’re intimidating one blogger because we don’t like what he says is a crazy accusation of people that don’t want to admit that someone they agree with might have done somethingthey shouldn’t have.”
Jason Tolbert, who writes the Tolbert Report, a conservative blog, said Campbell’s reporting could have contributed to the party’s action. He accused the party of using the law as a weapon.
“This wasn’t just a state employee where they were concerned about his time, his productivity or misuse of state dollars,” Tolbert said. “I think all that is a smoke screen for the real purpose, which is to silence a critic. I think they were trying to teach him a lesson and give him a dose of his own medicine.”
Late Friday, Tolbert’s blog was “unavailable” online. He did not respond to questions about why. In what may have been a symbolic gesture, Tolbert’s image on his Twitter page had a black strip over his mouth.
Woodmansee described the GOP’s Freedom of Information Act request as “retaliation.”
“I’ve always known that some of the stories Matt has written could bring back some retaliation. I just never really thought I would be the target, because I’ve never done any of the stuff to the state party that seems to be controversial,” he said.
Dugger said Woodmansee was included for the reason Campbell was - to make sure that state employees were not engaging in partisan activity when they were supposed to be working.
EXEMPTION
The court has ruled before that an exemption for specific persons also extends to people working for those persons. The attorney general’s exemption, for example, was applied to the attorney general’s assistant attorneys general, other members of hisstaff and his consultants in a utility rate case at the Public Service Commission. This ruling came in the 1992 court case of Bryant v. Mars.
A circuit court had ruled that the exemption was for the attorney general, but the Supreme Court applied it broadly to the attorney general’s staff as well. The court said its ruling reflected the Legislature’s intent.
In discussing that ruling, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, Fourth Edition, by John J. Watkins and Richard J. Peltz said the court’s interpretation “presumably applies across-theboard to staff members and private consultants for all the officials listed in the statute, i.e., the governor, attorney general, Supreme Court justices, and members of the General Assembly.”
“What remains uncertain, however, is what the court meant by ‘staff,’” they wrote.“The issue is an important one, for the scope of the exemption hinges on how far it extends down the ranks of employees working for the officeholder. For example, does it include everyone employed in the governor’s office? The agency heads who serve at the governor’s pleasure and make up his cabinet?”
Their discussion also presented alternate ways to understand the import of that ruling.
Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, said while state employees’ e-mails are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, only e-mails that relate to job performance have to be disclosed.
Information for this article was contributed by Bill Simmons of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 05/28/2011