AAC RESEARCH CORNER

redacted and provided within the three working day requirement. If necessary, the custodian would be required to send written notice of the delay and include the date and time the records will be available, the reason for delay and an estimated breakdown of the time necessary to fulfill the request.

After speaking to multiple county officials, a bill addressing these issues is long overdue. Van Buren County Judge Dale James described how the city of Fairfield Bay saw a drastic increase in FOIA requests after the Fairfield Bay Emergency Medical Services, the city’s all volunteer ambulance service, shut down in the summer of 2021. Since then, four residents have requested approximately 12,000 pages, or a stack of documents about 10-inches tall, worth of communications surrounding the shut down between Mayor Linda Duncan and the EMS department. Judge James believes these requests are “nefarious in nature.” Although not all the information requested is subject to FOIA’s protections, the Van Buren County attorney has advised the city of Fairfield Bay that it will be easier to just produce all or most of the information the requestors are seeking instead of subjecting themselves to potential liability. For this reason, requesters have learned to abuse the system because they know the city will eventually just produce the records.

The same requesters have now turned their harassing tactics against the Fairfield Bay volunteer fire department. As a result, members of the fire department recently voted on whether they wanted to shut down operations due to the magnitude of FOIA requests they have received. For now, the members have opted to keep providing services. Absent legislation directed to alleviate the constant strain to which they are subjected, it is uncertain how long they will be willing to keep their doors open.

If the department closes, they will not have been the first to succumb to the abuse. Five members of Fairfield Bay’s Office of Emergency Management Team have already quit their jobs to search for new employment over FOIA requests. A city with a population of about 2,000 cannot afford to lose the backbone of its community. Yet, if nothing changes, that is where Fairfield Bay is heading.

Unfortunately, in speaking with other state and county officials, it is clear this experience is not isolated to Van Buren County. For example, the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office has seen a strikingly similar pattern of requests. Most notably, these requesters have taken a more menacing approach as they have learned how to use FOIA most effectively to target individual state and county officials.

Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley said the requests began in January 2022 and are attributable to his reelection as sheriff. The majority of information sought is requested by a few self-proclaimed public servants and disgruntled former employees. Seemingly, these individuals take the information requested from several, unrelated events and use it out of context to generate content for their social media. In a poor attempt to gain relevance, they have set their sights on elected officials like Sheriff Staley by whatever means necessary. In their eyes, county employees serve one purpose — a means to an end.

Sheriff Staley’s name and character may be the intended target of these attacks and falsities, but he emphasized that he isn’t the one who ultimately suffers from the harm. Instead, it is those few people left to fulfill the mounds of requests. The Sheriff’s Office has one employee whose only job is to fulfill FOIA requests and two that have had to take on additional responsibilities to help complete them in a timely manner. Currently, the Sheriff’s Office is looking to hire an administrative assistant to provide additional relief.

If an unsophisticated scheme such as this can exploit FOIA to this capacity, another set of hands will only help elevate the strain, not solve the systemic issue. An example of this is when the office informs requesters of any delays if they have filed a single request that is too large to be reasonably fulfilled in the time allotted. The requestor will then refile for the same information over several smaller requests at the same time. Functionally, the two requests have the same implications, and the only purpose is to irritate or annoy the office. It is clear their proclamation to expose the truth is disingenuous and an unremarkable outcome of their larger scheme to retaliate against county and city officials. Since these requests have begun, the department estimates it has lost three employees. Put plainly, the kind of harassment these employees have received is not a part of their job description.

Conclusion

It is with these self-serving interests in mind, I can unequivocally say that these types of requests do not serve the general public’s interest in the pursuit of governmental transparency. So, I ask this. How many employees or volunteers must quit over FOIA requests before the legislature will provide them with the proper protections and compensation that they deserve? Ultimately, a few requests can cause devastating implications for a whole city. Now, it is time for the 94th General Assembly to step up and make the necessary changes to FOIA.