Defiant to the end, and in the face of Sebastian County prosecutor Daniel Shue’s public pronouncement to the contrary, city directors lash back at charges of Freedom of Information act violations.
One Fort Smith City director still contends he didn’t violate the FOIA, a second says the law needs to be changed to aid and abet those that would do public business in private and the city administrator has deemed the tenets of the FOIA as “ridiculous.”
Directors Like Lorenz and Keith Lau along with the main administrator for the city all put forth their sentiments in video taped interviews with Sebastian County investigator Phillip Pevehouse and the Sebastian County Sheriff did the trio a favor by not asking for prosecution in the case. But Shue, who issued a strongly worded statement on Monday saying violations had occurred.
Sebastian County prosecutor Daniel Shue on Monday said that city directors Andre’ Good, Keith Lau and Mike Lorenz along with the top administrator for the city participated in a round robin chain of emails discussing Police Chief Nathaniel Clark’s proposal to allow the police department to circumvent the Civil Service Commission and hire from outside the FSPD for supervisory positions.
“After a careful review of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act and the relevant law, it is the opinion of this office that a violation of the Freedom of Information Act has occurred in the emails dated May 20, 2017 through May 31, 2017, and the emails dated Aug. 9, 2017 through Aug. 11, 2017.”
Shue also stated on Tuesday that any future violations that although the SCSO did not ask for the violations to be prosecuted “if there’s another occurrence of conducting public business in this fashion, the Sheriff’s Office and my office will be compelled by the law to take further action.”
Despite Shue’s statement and the pronouncement of the violations from investigators finding of violations, Director Lorenz told investigators that he didn’t believe he had violated the FOIA laws and given the opportunity we wouldn’t do anything differently.
City administrator Carl Gefken told investigators the law, as written, was ridiculous and “what you don’t know, is what you don’t know” and called the laws “strict.”
Lau attempted to mitigate his part in the violations saying ““What I did was a little bit different,” Lau said. “I responded back to an email from Carl Gefken and I responded all and two of the city directors and Joey (attorney Joey McCutchen) and now I guess the prosecuting attorney thought that was a violation of the FOI.”
McCutchen had filed the lawsuit after stumbling upon the violations while looking into a non-related case.
