Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City Records Open To The Public Under FOI Law

In an opinion from Arkansas Attorney General Mark Pryor, the City of Prescott is required to furnish the names of those owing on their utility bills to the public, which includes requests which have been made by the Nevada County Picayune.

Picayune publisher Ricky Ragsdale sought the opinion through State Representative Percy Malone in April when the newspaper began investigating the overdue accounts for the city's electrical department.

The questions posed to Pryor were: "Are the names of the customers of the city-owned utility company by the City of Prescott protected from being released, or are the names on the records of a nature that they can and should be released to any taxpayer?

"Assuming the names are public record and have to be released, then does any publication of the names (of either past due or current utility customers) protect the city and those publishing the names from lawsuits from those customers?'

Pryor responded the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requires the disclosure of customer-specified payment record histories of a city-owned utility company. He went on to write such records are cannot be protected on constitutional privacy grounds and there is no basis for refusing to release the names and account numbers, assuming records containing the information exist.

However, if the records didn't exist, the city would not have been required to create or compline them to satisfy an FOIA request.

Pryor said his opinion was based in part on the public's legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with the requirements of state law prohibiting special utility rates for public officials.

Such records, he said, clearly fall under the FOIA and the city would not be justified in withholding them.

Under Attorney General Opinion97-244, the information normally contained in payment records of a municipal utility is not of an extremely personal nature.

"While I recognize that one's payment history may be a potential source of embarrassment," he wrote, "I believe it is unlikely that this constitutes the type of intimate financial information that would justify nondisclosure on constitutional grounds."

In answering the second question, concerning suits because of information being released, Pryor wrote: "Where the published information came from public records, no private action in tort will lie."

What this means is lawsuits based on the publication of the names and account information would fail if filed.

It seems, though, the Picayune wasn't he first newspaper to seek such information.

According to information contained in Pryor's opinion, in 1997 a reporter from Fort Smith requested similar information from a municipally-owned water system.

The Fort Smith city council posed the same arguments the Prescott council did  disclosure would constitute an invasion of privacy.

Former Attorney General Winston Bryant, though, responded in much the same way Pryor did, granting access to the requested records.

Under the FOIA, "public records" means writings, recorded sounds, film, tapes or data compilations in any form, required by law to be kept or otherwise kept, and which constitute a record of the performance or lack of performance of official functions which are or should be carried out by a public official or employee, a governmental agency, or any other agency wholly or partially supported by public funds or expending public funds. All records maintained in public offices or by public employees within the scope of their employment shall be presumed to be public records.

These records, under the FOIA, are to be made open to the citizens of the state, if requested.

However, there are exemptions for certain public records, which can't be obtained under the FOIA.

These include: state income tax records, medical records, scholastic records, adoption records, site files and records maintained by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and the Arkansas Archeological Survey, grand jury minutes, unpublished drafts of judicial or quasi judicial opinions and decisions, documents protected by rule of the court, files which, if disclosed, would give advantage to competitors or bidders and undisclosed investigations by law enforcement agencies of suspected criminal activities.