Gov. Mike Beebe should have to prove in court why he’s entitled to keep secret the applications submitted to him by those seeking his appointment to state boards and commissions, Republican attorneys argue in the latest round of filings in the party’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Democrat who is in his last year in office.
Megan Tollett, the executive director of the Republican Party of Arkansas, filed the open-records lawsuit against Beebe in Pulaski County Circuit Court last month after he refused to grant her October request for about two years’ worth of applications from those seeking appointment to the more than 300 state panels under Beebe’s purview.
Beebe claims the applications are shielded from public release by an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act that allows him to withhold the governor’s “unpublished memoranda, working papers and correspondence” and that the materials sought by the Republicans fall under all three categories.
Beebe has asked the presiding judge, Mary McGowan, to throw out the suit. No hearings have been scheduled.
In response, Tollett, represented by Maumelle husband and wife lawyers George Ritter and Bilenda Harris-Ritter, counters that Beebe’s arguments have no real legal grounding. Harris-Ritter, a Republican candidate for the county Quorum Court, is also the party’s assistant general counsel.
The Sunday court filing describes the governor’s arguments as an effort to curtail the definition of public records when the law requires the records be presumed open to public scrutiny.
In the pleading, the Republicans accuse Beebe of exaggerating the effect of a 1992 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that extended the working papers exemption beyond the office-holders specifically listed in the statute, which includes all legislators, the attorney general and the 19 judges on Arkansas’ two appeals courts.
That 22-year-old decision, Bryant v. Mars, named after then-Attorney General Winston Bryant, allows the governor to claim work created within his office is exempt from public disclosure, according to the filing.
But the ruling does not extend that protection to documents that have been sent to Beebe from people who don’t work for him, according to the GOP pleading.
“The governor claims that the ‘working papers’ exemption covers documents not only generated within his office, but also those received from outside sources,” the filing states. “[The 1992 ruling] can provide no legal support to the governor in this case.”
Beebe’s argument that those papers should be classified as the governor’s correspondence is also baseless, according to the filing.
“Records sent to the governor by outside individuals are not his correspondence. They are the correspondence of his senders,” the filing states. “Under no interpretation can the governor claim that ‘correspondence of the governor’ only refers to correspondence he receives.”
Beebe’s response to Tollett’s suit also demonstrates that he knows he is withholding public documents, according to the GOP filing, which points out his motion to dismiss specifically states that only “some” of the records Tollett wants are not public.
The Freedom of Information Act requires that he separate the public records from the ones that can be legally withheld, the pleading states.
“The governor has merely speculated that some of the records in his possession may not be subject to public disclosure. He offered no factual evidence to substantiate this claim. At the same time, he admitted … that ‘some’ of the documents requested by plaintiff are not public records,” the pleading states. “Under the [open-records law], the governor has an obligation to segregate exempt from non-exempt materials and disclose the non-exempt materials to the person who requested them.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 01/29/2014