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The Arizona Press Club's Annual First Amendment Disservice Award, known among
Arizona's politicians as "The Brick Wall Award," recognizes the public official
or institution which most brazenly ignores the state's public records law. The
public records law
is a vital tool for journalists to check abuses of power, hold our elected servants accountable and monitor the spending of public dollars. All records of government agencies and officials are supposed to be open to public inspection, except for a few areas exempted by law. Unfortunately, there's never a shortage of bureaucrats and government officials who don't believe the law applies to them, so it takes truly outrageous and arrogant conduct to come out on top.
Because public records are important to all of us, and because we've all been
stonewalled at one time or another, the press club board needs your help in
selecting each year's "winners." Anyone can make a nomination, but the best way
to make sure that your selection wins is to provide solid detail: What the
request was, how long your nominees delayed, and any other measures they took to
stand in the way of openness in government. Keep a record and let us know,
nominations are accepted towards the first part of the year, for "awarding" at
the annual awards banquet in May. Click here
for this year's nomination info and deadline.
(nominating letter from the EXPLORER newspaper)
Without question, the Town of Marana deserves this year’s Brick Wall Award.
The town has denied the public access to public records time and time again. It began with a police officer who had been arrested twice for DUI and again for domestic violence. The town blacked out almost every line of the internal investigation records, citing the allegedly well thought out balancing test between the town’s privacy and the citizens’ right to know.
Apparently, the citizens who pay this police officer to protect them do not have the right to know if he has been breaking the law himself.
It took almost an entire year for the town to come clean about its former parks and recreation director, who had been regularly surfing pornographic Web sites at work. The town refused to discuss why it let the director abruptly resign with a month’s pay. Marana forced the EXPLORER to spend thousands of dollars to sue and find out why.
The town apparently did not consider the director’s personnel file a public record, though the town released several other unredacted personnel files for other employees. A judge finally told the town that it needed to release the director’s file, without the black marker.
The judge also forced the town to release an audit of the official’s computer, which showed more than a thousand visits to sexually explicit Web sites. Before the judge’s ruling, the town refused to even say whether such records existed, a blatant disregard of state laws.
A town council election recently brought allegations that Marana’s town council works out kinks and disagreements before public meetings. The mayor himself admitted to working out details to major projects in private so the council would not be argumentative in public.
Worst of all, the town adopted a media policy in 2006 that threatens its employees with disciplinary action up to firing if they talk to members of the media. Though contact with media is discouraged in the policy, employees that speak to the media must contact the town’s public information officer or town manager to give them a synopsis of any conversation with a reporter * just in case the town needs to correct what the employee told the reporter.
2005 Winner: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio
2005 Runner-up:
City of Williams
By Laura Clymer
2005-06 President, Arizona Press Club
City Editor, Arizona Daily Sun
Since 1994, the press club has been singling out the politicians and bureaucrats
most in need of a good bitch slap when it comes to public records, by bestowing
the one award that no one should want to win: The Annual First Amendment
Disservice Award, also known as the Brick Wall Award. This year, eight agencies
or people were nominated for the award.
The good news is that journalists across Arizona have been only too willing to
rat out public records transgressors and other assorted bad guys.
The bad part is that there’s never a lack of folks in our state who deserve the
Brick Wall.
This year, two cases clearly stood out as worthy of our scorn. I’m sad to report
that I have a connection to this year’s runner-up—the City of Williams.
When that city stonewalled us on public information, it was my newsroom and my
community that paid the price.
Last April, Williams Police Chief Frank Manson unexpectedly resigned his post
after blasting the city for violating open meetings laws. But when my staff at
the Arizona Daily Sun requested a copy of his severance agreement with
the city, officials told the paper to take a hike.
We did—to the Coconino County Superior Court, where we sued Williams.
Seven months later, this January, a judge heard arguments and took a look at the
documents. His decision: The city had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously.” The
document was to be released.
Fighting the city cost the Sun nearly $20,000 – a sum that the judge has
ordered Williams to repay us. Naturally, they’re fighting that decision.
Talk about a waste of money! But the city of Williams’ poor judgment had to
finish second to the antics of this year’s Brick Wall Award winner: Maricopa
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The sheriff has won international attention for his clever publicity stunts –
pink underwear, green bologna, and, most recently, special units of volunteer
deputies roaming the county to bust illegal aliens. But as two Arizona
newspapers have painfully learned, anyone who dares to criticize him in print
can expect retaliation.
Consider what happened after the West Valley View chided Arpaio in an
editorial: He swiftly cut off the paper’s access to arrest reports at an
Avondale substation, where it had been collecting them for two decades. When the
West Valley View complained, the sheriff’s solution was to keep the
reports from everyone at that substation. The upshot was that reporters from
Wickenburg, Litchfield Park and other far-flung communities were forced to drive
to downtown Phoenix, file formal public-records requests, and hope that the
sheriff’s office bothered to cooperate by deadline. Too often, they didn’t.
Phoenix New Times described a similar disregard for public records law.
After writing critically about the sheriff, New Times reporter John
Dougherty was barred from collecting even the most basic public records.
Communications Director Lisa Allen-McPherson told Dougherty that she’d “never”
release the records. When he challenged her, she fired back, “So sue us.”
Both the West Valley View and New Times now have lawsuits pending
against the sheriff. In testimony for the New Times case, Lisa
Allen-McPherson gave this explanation for why she refused to release the public
records: She didn’t think New Times was, quote, “legitimate.”
Never mind that Arpaio had given Dougherty a lengthy interview just weeks
before. I mean, the guy usually gravitates to media like flies to garbage—maybe
I should have used a different simile there.
When Dougherty’s story proved to be critical of the sheriff, his minions decided
that the paper just didn’t count – and that the law could be ignored.
So Dougherty writes a critical story. Kaboom.
West Valley View writes a critical editorial. Kaboom.
Can you see a pattern here, folks?
It’s easy for press clubs to get caught up in the fun of journalism contests.
But while honoring the state’s best journalism is a blast, I submit that the
most important thing we can do as a press club is to shed light on those people
who flout the laws that we all depend on to do our jobs and report the truth.
This year, we have at least two public agencies that fit the bill. I can only
hope that next year, we won’t be getting any nominations – but I’m not holding
my breath.
Unfortunately, representatives from the city of Williams and the Maricopa County
Sheriff’s Office could not attend the awards banquet to accept their awards
due to other pressing concerns—or something like that.
1998 Brick Wall Award goes to:
Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano, Tempe City Attorney Brad Woodford and the City of Tempe
When a Tempe police officer was accused of a brutal sexual assault on an Arizona State University student, the city attorney's office took a routine public records request and used it as an excuse to sue the Mesa Tribune - a move that, if successful, would have sealed the disciplinary records of police officers from public scrutiny. What's worse, however, is the disdain displayed by Tempe officials over this assault on the press. Though they could not provide a single exemption for the material under state law, they insisted on the time and expense of a lawsuit to protect records they'd routinely released for other officers. Mayor Neil Giuliano and City Attorney Brad Woodford were cavalier about the case: Giuliano even said he doesn't think citizens care much about public records. Other city council members were so clueless they didn't even know about the litigation. The Tribune's Jim Ripley was right when he called the city's actions "unconscionable" - and the City of Tempe should be held accountable for them.
First Runner-Up The Arizona State Board of Medical Examiners (BOMEX)
What does a troubled government agency do after it's come under heavy criticism for sloppy procedures, wasting time and money and failing to carry out its duties? In BOMEX's case, it adopted a "see-no-evil" attitude. After a year filled with incompetence and kid-gloves treatment of doctors, the board voted to shut the public out of thousands of complaints filed against doctors - despite the promises of a new executive director to be more accountable to citizens. BOMEX initially defended the move, saying the public didn't need to know everything about its physicians - even after a Phoenix woman bled to death while under the care of a doctor who'd been before the agency repeatedly. Only harsh criticism from the Legislature convinced the board members to change their minds - but not before the agency's staff had drafted a proposal to make the shut-out permanent.
1999
Bricks to The Tribune's Wittmer, other stadium task-forcers
The Arizona Press Club's annual "Brick Wall Award" is reserved for public officials and institutions that brazenly ignore the duty to disclose public information. The award's aim is to raise awareness of public-records abuses that persist across the state.
This year's Brick Wall Award goes to Karen Wittmer, publisher of Tribune Newspapers, and her fellow members of the Governor's Stadium Task Force.
In its first meeting last November, Gov. Jane Dee Hull's Stadium Task Force huddled behind closed doors to consider using the public treasury to build a new football stadium for the Arizona Cardinals.
Though the task force clearly was a public body, its 35 members -- mostly drawn from the local business community -- were used to doing deals in the privacy of the boardroom. The group hoped to avoid the sunshine of open meetings, claiming it might inhibit frank discussions. Not only did it hold that first meeting behind closed doors, it announced afterward that future meetings would be closed, too.
Eventually, those doors were opened after The Arizona Republic and the Associated Press threatened to sue. But there was one member of the task force who should have stood up against the abuse of Arizona's Open Meetings Law: Karen Wittmer, publisher of Tribune Newspapers (including the East Valley Tribune, Scottsdale Tribune, Daily News-Sun, Yuma Daily Sun and Ahwatukee Foothill News). Instead, Wittmer reportedly voted with the others to ban the public and the press -- including one of her own reporters, who was waiting just outside the meeting room door.
At the very least, Wittmer might have been expected as a member of the fourth estate to register her opposition and excuse herself from voting. Instead she sided with those who favored secrecy.
Members of Governor's Stadium Task Force include:
In the first round of AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) testing, nearly 90 percent of last year's 10th-graders flunked the math portion. (In the test's other two portions, writing and reading, about 70 percent and 40 percent flunked, respectively.)
When the press requested copies of AIMS the test after it was administered last spring, Keegan imposed a one-hour time limit for viewing the examination that took students nine hours to take. She refused to provide a copy, even though state law requires that public records be open for inspection and copying during business hours. To make matters worse, the Arizona Department of Education's viewing policy requires anyone who looks at the test to sign a non-disclosure waiver.
Keegan eventually expanded the viewing time, but kept the waiver, which essentially prohibits a parent with a question about his or her child's test from seeking an expert opinion about it. Unless, of course, that opinion comes from the state Department of Education, which of course is loathe to admit the test may be flawed. The department has persisted in refusing to provide a copy of the test, even though it was taken by some 45,000 to 50,000 students last spring.
Keegan's contention is that if any portion of the test becomes public - even after it has been taken - the state won't be able to recycle various questions. As if kids who've already taken it haven't already discussed those questions with their friends.
In her deposition, Keegan states that if the questions are compromised, the state will be forced to come up with a new test each year. She doesn't know how much that will cost, but she's suggested it's in the millions. States like Colorado, New York, Texas and Ohio make their tests available each year, and they don't think they're compromised.
In an effort to further open the AIMS test for public inspection, The Arizona Republic has filed a lawsuit against Keegan. At press time, the next hearing was set for early April.
Last update: Feb. 18, 2008
First runner-up for "Brick Wall" dis-honors goes to Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, who has stated publicly that the reason she refused to obey the state's public records access law in regards to the AIMS test is that it would cost too much.
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