In an ongoing dispute stemming from lawsuits alleging Fort Smith city directors violated the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, a brief filed by the plaintiff Thursday denies the city's claims that emails cannot violate that law.
In January, the Sebastian County Circuit Court ruled that three city directors had violated the act by exchanging emails to discuss city business, which constituted informal meetings.
The city's appeal, filed May 30, argues that the emails in question did not constitute a meeting subject to the Freedom of Information Act and that they provide only nondecisional, background information.
The two lawsuits were filed by Fort Smith resident Bruce Wade. The first, filed in June 2017, was over emails circulated among city directors and City Administrator Carl Geffken over whether the Civil Service Commission should be dissolved.
The second lawsuit, filed in August, complained that city directors violated the Freedom of Information Act when they discussed through emails whether to accept a settlement offer in the Civil Service Commission email lawsuit.
The three city directors named in the suits are Andre Good, Keith Lau and Mike Lorenz.
Circuit Judge Michael Fitzhugh granted summary judgments in both suits. Summary judgments are granted when there are no questions of fact for a jury to decide, leaving the judge to decide the case based on law.
"Under the facts of this case, the court concludes that informal meetings subject to the FOIA were held by way of emails," Fitzhugh wrote in granting the summary motion.
Fort Smith City Attorney Jerry Canfield, who filed the appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court on the city's behalf, said the circuit court's ruling had "absolutely no discussion of the absence of legislative or judicial holdings that email can constitute a FOIA meeting."
Joey McCutchen, the Fort Smith lawyer representing Wade, noted that all seven members of Fort Smith's Board of Directors were in an email group established by the city.
"If Fort Smith's argument is upheld, any governing body, board, or commission could circumvent FOIA's laudatory purpose of open government by discussing public business through a series of group email exchanges involving the entire governing body," McCutchen wrote.
Information for this article was contributed by Dave Hughes of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 07/07/2018