By LOG CABIN STAFF

The Freedom of Information Act is a law to ensure the openness of all levels of government, not just for the media, but for everyone.

From school district salaries to reports from the sheriff's office, many pieces of information are available for public viewing under this act; however, there are many public officials who are unaware of those rights.

Sunshine Week, held March 16-22, is a national initiative to open dialogues and verify that local government officials are aware of the law.

According to the Sunshine Week Web site, the event was first launched in 2002 in response to efforts by legislators in Florida to create new exemptions to the state's public records law.

In Arkansas the Freedom of Information Act orders custodians of any public records, described as writings, recorded sounds, films, tapes, electronic or computer-based information or data compilations in any medium, to provide those records to any member of the public if a request is made.

RACHEL PARKER

DICKERSON

On Wednesday I drove to the Mayflower School District administration building to request a list of the high school teachers and their salaries. Once inside the Mayflower administration building I was greeted by a woman at a desk who asked if she could help me.

"I don't know," I replied. "Can you provide me with a list of the high school's teachers and their salaries?" I asked.

She relayed my request to a second woman. "That's FOI," I heard the second woman say. The second woman approached me and explained it was the district's policy that I would have to make a written request, and after they received it, they would have five days to respond.

How can that be the district's policy when the law says otherwise?

According to section 25-19-105 of the Freedom of Information Act, which deals with the examination and copying of public records, "A citizen may make a request to the custodian to inspect, copy or receive copies of public records. The request may be made in person, by telephone, by facsimile transmission, by electronic mail or by other electronic means" Also, according to a 1992 Arkansas attorney general's opinion, the records should be made available immediately unless they are in use or in storage, in which case they should be made available within three working days.

On Friday I returned with a fully loaded FOI request, addressed to the superintendent. It was after 3 p.m., and when I entered the building, all the people I had spoken to on Wednesday had apparently gone home for the day. However, a man came by in a couple of minutes, and I discovered it was the superintendent himself.

I handed over my FOI request, telling him I had requested to see records and the employees told me to put it in writing. He asked what I had been seeking, and I told him. He replied that should have been readily available. He asked another employee if she could get it for me. She said it would take about 30 minutes to compile, but it was no problem. Then he said, "Isn't that on our Web site?" He looked it up for me, but unfortunately, the link did not work. He assured me they would get the records to me in the mail at the address I provided in my letter. At one point during our conversation, he held up my FOI request and said, "You didn't have to do this."

Why did the other employees in the building tell me otherwise?

CARRIE STRODE

I was assigned to go to the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office to obtain a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for street deputies. I approached the window and asked the woman behind the desk for the manual, to which she informed me she had to call her supervisor. After talking to her superior she informed me that, under the Freedom of Information Act, I could have a copy but they would need to make a copy of it and charge me $1 per page. The manual is more than 300 pages long.

I also went to Unit II of the Faulkner County Detention Center, where I attempted to obtain a copy of the jail roster. The woman behind the desk made a couple of phone calls, then informed me they could not give those out to the public. Under the Freedom of Information Act, both of the above documents should be made available to the general public.

LIBERTY PARKS

I was on a mission for two pieces of information, an assessment of the home of University of Central Arkansas President Lu Hardin and the Faulkner County Emergency Operations Plan.

The Faulkner County Assessor's Office has a public file room where, if you can figure out the computer form, you will have no trouble finding the documents you want. Unfortunately no matches were found for my search. I followed the signs reading "assistance" back to an office with two women who cheerfully greeted me and asked what they could do to help. I explained I was having trouble with the computer and they offered to search for me. The Hardins' home is owned by the university, which made the search a little more complicated, but they never asked why I was there or who I was. They just helped.

The Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management was a little bit more difficult for me only because I was not sure what the particular document I was after was called. I kept calling it the emergency operations report and that led to confusion between myself and the woman in the office. She did ask me who I was with and why I wanted the document, but I just stated I was curious. She accepted the answer and I believe her question was really an attempt to figure out what exactly I was looking for so she could help. I left the office and called my editor to confirm the document's name and once I knew I was after a manual detailing what the county did in cases of disasters, I went back to the office. After explaining what I needed, the woman at the front desk immediately knew what I was asking for and gave me a package containing the plan, which was about 300 pages, and a CD. Both were provided free of charge.

MONICA HOOPER

I strolled into the Conway Fire Department on Wednesday afternoon hoping to peek at the fire runs from the past week. The only person I saw when I walked in the building was the secretary who greeted me nearly at the door. She asked if she could help me and I told her that I wanted to see the fire runs from the past week or past month if possible. For a moment she looked a little confused and told me that the whole month would take a while to look at. So I said, "OK can I just see the runs from this week?" She told me to wait a moment while she walked over to her computer to pull the records up. She then asked why I wanted them, and I said I was just curious. Hoping the secretary wouldn't think of me as some random fire bug I wandered over to the book and movie collection boxes for soldiers in Iraq. The secretary walked to the back of the station and came back with a 14 page print-out of Fire Runs from Feb. 1 to March 18. Each report contained the time, place and type of run medical assistance, structure fire, etc. And I wasn't charged for the print-out.

DANIEL DOYLE

On Thursday afternoon I went to the University of Central Arkansas campus to obtain from the custodian of record a list of tenured faculty members and their salaries. At the third floor of Wingo Hall, I told a worker what I needed. The assistant for Paul McLendon, UCA vice president for Financial Services, told me that in order to obtain the requested record, I would need to inquire at the Human Resources desk.

At HR, I told a front receptionist, "I'm trying to get ahold of a list of tenured faculty members and their salaries." The receptionist directed me to the payroll office, where payroll processor Mary Beene and another worker in the room identified Operations Coordinator Valerie Nicholson as the custodian of the record I was seeking. The receptionist then relayed to me that Nicholson would send me an e-mail containing the record.

The receptionist asked, "Can I get your name and e-mail address?" I gave her a non-professional e-mail address and assumed I would soon receive the requested record, since someone in McLendon's office had sent me there for it, and since three persons in Nicholson's office identified Nicholson as the record's custodian. All three implied that the record existed.

As the day went on, I still hadn't received the record. I called the HR office and spoke to the same receptionist; she said Nicholson actually had some questions for me about my request, but Nicholson was on the phone and would call me back.

At 4:21 p.m., I received a call from Nicholson, who asked me for what reason I was requesting the record. I said I was requesting it "for a personal project." Nicholson then said she wasn't sure if she "could give that out to just anybody for a 'personal project' ... not without written freedom of information inquiries." I said, "But doesn't the freedom of information act say that you need to have that readily available anyway? I mean, shouldn't you be able to just make me a copy from your own budget or payroll (files)?"

Nicholson replied, "Not without a written request," and asked me to e-mail her such a request. I said, "Before I e-mail you that FOI request, are you aware that the state of Arkansas requires you to actually just give it to me, and not to tell me to give you a written request?" She then said, "If you can give me proof of that, I can give it to you."

I sent Nicholson an official open records request letter containing legal language which many citizens may not know about, and which I only know about because I'm a journalist. Attached to the request letter was a copy of the state's open records law, with several bolded portions her agency had not followed. The custodian had three business days to comply specifically with my legalese-laden e-mail, but as for my in-person request for a personnel record, the custodian of record is required to "determine within twenty-four (24) hours of the receipt of the request whether the records are exempt from disclosure and (to) make efforts to the fullest extent possible to notify the person making the request and the subject of the records of that decision," according to law.

I didn't hear from Nicholson again, but at 1:47 p.m. Friday, within about 24 hours of my initial in-person request, I received a call from Tom Courtway, who is UCA's retained attorney. I'm not sure if he remembered or recognized my name from the media, and in asking him I would've blown my cover. Courtway assured me that I would receive the requested record before Tuesday.

From my conversation with Courtway, it seemed possible that HR workers at UCA had to specially compile the list I requested, even though on Thursday I had walked out of Nicholson's first-floor suite expecting to receive a copy of it soon, because it had been indicated to me that the document already existed. I was told all Nicholson needed was an e-mail address.

JOE LAMB

A ratty old T-shirt with what's got to be the world's most stubborn pizza sauce stain, my trusty Chuck Taylor high tops and a scraggly-looking four-day stubble should have been the perfect college student disguise when I went to ask for the day's incident reports at the UCA Police Station.

I'd been in there dozens of times as a student to pay parking tickets, but I've not had a lot of interaction with the UCA PD as a journalist.

I went to the dispatch booth and asked a young woman I'm sure I'd never met before if I could see the day's incident reports. The request had her pretty well buffaloed, and I think it'd be safe to say it was the first time anyone had walked in off the street and asked for the reports. She asked who I was and I said my name, but didn't identify myself as a journalist.

What followed was a series of radio and cell phone conversations that hit every link of the chain of command and ended when a familiar-looking UCA PD officer walked out and said "Hey, Joe. Are you looking for any report in particular?"

Once again, the UCA Police Station was proving to be my Waterloo. I tried to play it cool, hoping the officer had just heard my name from the dispatcher and was trying to be extra friendly, but it soon became clear that my cover was blown and Sunshine Week was ruined, probably forever.

The process got as far as the officer showing the dispatcher how to print off the reports, but by that time we were all just kicking around the empty husk of FOIA.

"No, just stop," I said. "Let's save some trees here. I just needed to know if you would give the reports to whoever walked in; like if somebody's parents were visiting the campus and wanted to see the month's police reports or whatever."

The officer said they would give reports out, but only after they'd been approved by someone higher up the ladder than himself. Four reports were written Friday, he said, and none of them had yet been approved.

So, at the end of the day, we concerned citizen's have only one officer's word for it when it comes to UCA PD's FOIA compliance and yours truly gets to take his turn holding the tall, frosty goblet of failure and drinking deeply from it.

The officer did fail to mention that approved reports are available online at www.ucapd.com, but the most recent report available there as of Friday night was from last Sunday.

(Staff writer Jessica Bauer also contributed to this report.)

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