City-level transparency continued to be a topic of discussion at the Tuesday Little Rock city board meeting. Jimmie Cavin, the out-of-town critic of Mayor Frank Scott Jr., read a prepared statement about the city’s Chief Financial Officer Sara Lenehan admitting there are missing credit card statements from individual accounts.
City Attorney Tom Carpenter addressed this, saying more precise language needed to be used with Cavin to let him know the receipts do in fact exist, but only the physical copies, and those were not easily accessible. Carpenter met with Lenehan Tuesday and saw the receipts, he said.
Regardless, Carpenter recognized Cavin’s concerns and agreed the city needs to address them. Carpenter presented a memorandum outlining a plan to make city business more transparent and accessible to the public. That plan includes hiring employees to help process the information requests, being very precise with language, providing appropriate updates people who have requested information and having a sufficient amount of server storage space to make electronic records easy to search and access.
“Arkansas probably has the most liberal open records and open meetings act in the nation,” the memorandum read. “The current attempts by the City, and the involved employees, answer many of these AFOIA [Arkansas Freedom of Information Act] requests promptly and completely. However, issues continue to arise that strain the City’s current resources and operation.”
Last week, Scott announced that he named Chief Deputy City Attorney Alex Betton to head a separate Freedom of Information Act division. Staff will put all of its effort into fulfilling public records requests, a task that can require pulling thousands of documents that sometimes need to be partially redacted to protect confidential information. Scott also announced a program, NextRequest, that should quicken the process.
Vice Mayor Lance Hines said FOI-related complaints have increased in the last several years, but he isn’t convinced the plan now being considered will fix the problem.
“I just question whether every time we have a crisis, that Mayor, you want to create a whole new department to handle something,” he said. “We’re adding layers of more bureaucracy and it seems like it’s going to slow things down instead of speed it up.”
Scott said Hines was “completely incorrect…We are making some corrections and changes to those issues when we see an issue being handled. We see those issues and assign the division to the city attorney’s office, which actually is probably the best thing to do from a legal standpoint and a standpoint of transparency.”
Several officials voiced concerns about the city’s FOI practices, including At-large Director Joan Adcock who said she is “tired of some people coming before us every week and they can’t get FOIs out from the city.”
For the most part, the remainder of the Little Rock city board meeting went smoothly. The board of directors approved the continued placement of school resource officers in the Little Rock School District and for two schools in Pulaski County. Western Hills Park was given the green light for pavilion and restroom construction and the city extended a dozen youth programs, part of Scott’s prevention intervention and treatment initiatives. The zoo also received approval for new elephant shade structures.
Deciding to settle the civil litigation for multi-family development near Dover Drive in Southwest Little Rock was imperative Tuesday night for an upcoming court date on Aug. 29. Director Doris Wright fought hard for her constituents who already have experienced early-morning and late-night construction. She urged her colleagues to consider compensation or an alternative route to the forthcoming apartment complex. After an hour-long discussion, the board approved Carpenter to continue with the settlement with no changes.