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Greenberg’s bills target stronger FOI law in state |
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Friday, 09 January 2009 |
State Rep. Dan Greenberg, R-Little Rock, filed five bills Thursday dealing with the public’s access to government information.
Part of Greenberg’s constituency lies in Saline County. He will begin a second term when the 87th General Assembly convenes on Monday.
“Our Freedom of Information law is like Swiss cheese,” he said. “It has holes in it, and the general principle of freedom of information is hard to argue with. When you have openness, you have accountable government.”
One of the biggest difficulties with the current law, he said, is when someone makes a request of an agency and that request is denied, the only option to fight the denial is to hire a lawyer. “And a lot of people don’t have the money to do that.”
Many states have administrative review setup so regular people don’t have to spend a lot of money to obtain public information, Greenberg noted.
“I wanted to come up with a cost effective way to have administrative review here,” he said.
Thus, his bill would allow allow the state attorney general to review any denials of access under the state’s FOI law. The bill states that the attorney general would have five days to issue his or her opinion.
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he was concerned that the proposal would put a large burden on his office by making his attorneys review thousands of FOIs made to local and state agencies.
“To try and issue an opinion on every FOIA request that is denied would, I believe, be an additional burden,” McDaniel said. “I don’t know how many employees I would have to hire or what the fiscal impact would be on this legislation. Until I know more about it, I certainly am not in a position to say I support it.”
Greenberg said the proposal would not prevent anyone from filing a complaint in circuit court over an FOI denial, but is aimed at giving another appeal option for people who may not have the resources for a court battle over open records.
Another bill seeks to protect public employees from retaliation for requesting records under the state Freedom of Information Act.
“A public employer shall not take adverse action against a public employee because the public employee or a person authorized to act on behalf of the public employee exercises any right or privilege provided a citizen under this chapter,” according to the bill.
“The person who is most likely to know whether or not something is going wrong in state government is a government employee,” Greenberg said.
Other proposals filed Thursday by Greenberg include legislation that would require the Arkansas Crime Information Center to release to the public the criminal history of elected officials, political candidates and agency directors. That measure, however, only requires the agency to identify offenses where the individual was found guilty, or pleaded guilty or no contest.
“While it’s generally not a good idea to put everyone’s criminal records on the Internet, I do think there is a special standard for those who are in government,” he said. “There’s more danger of corruption,” he noted, when these records are hard to obtain.
The “Open Checkbooks in Government Act” would create a state database containing information on public expenditures. The database would be accessible through a Web site that anyone could access and search for free. The Web site would be created and maintained by the Department of Finance and Administration.
“Nine or 10 states have put the entire state budget online, and now that we’ll have annual sessions, with the off-year session dealing with the budget, it should be easily done,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said he’s always been geared toward a journalistic/reformed viewpoint. He acknowledged his Pulitzer-prize winning journalist father Paul Greenberg helped influence his own perspective concerning access to government information.
Committees that Greenberg will serve this session include state agencies, education and audit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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