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Amy Sherrill, FOIArkansas Project

If there’s anything in the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act that alarms public officials — especially law enforcement officials — it is language that allows certain documents in personnel files to be released.

An even greater concern is that private information will be released, either through human error or an employee’s lack of knowledge of the law.

Although some personnel documents, including evaluations and disciplinary actions, are disclosable, others are exempt from disclosure under the FOIA.

Personnel file exemptions include information such as medical information, family information and Social Security numbers.

“It’s designed to protect people,” Fort Smith Police Chief Randy Reed said of the act. “But, when you’ve got the human factor, it’s so easy to overlook something. There’s always the possibility you missed something.”

There’s one part of the FOI law Reed especially doesn’t like; it doesn’t require a person requesting records to give a reason. Sometimes people ask for a personnel file to get back at an officer who arrested them, he said.

“It’s very unfair to a person (officer) who’s done nothing,” Reed said.

Reed said that when a request for an officer’s personnel file is made, the department notifies the employee, who can then seek an attorney general’s opinion. The attorney general is required to issue an opinion within three days.

An Arkansas Highway Police officer, Lt. Neal K. Duke of Marion, asked for an attorney general’s opinion this year after a person in charge of police records determined that his entire personnel file was subject to the FOI Act.

Attorney General Mark Pryor opined that several items in Duke’s file did not fall under the act -- medical records, school transcripts, state and federal income tax records, insurance records, social security number, unlisted telephone numbers, test scores, marital status, driver’s license number and home address.

Floyd Johnson, Jonesboro public safety director, also expressed concern that some employees in charge of records are not well informed about the FOIA.

“A lot of clerical help, they get excited if somebody comes in and requests something and (they) hand everything over,” Johnson said. “Maybe it’s a newly elected official or a new employee in the records division. I don’t know that the act is all that responsible for it. They just need to be better educated on the act itself.”

Johnson also expressed concern about the accidental release of a juvenile crime record.

“I’m not opposed to FOI, but I think it goes too far,” Johnson said. “For example, all the records in the courthouse are supposed to be public record. Some of those records are supposed to be sealed. What if for some reason or another they weren’t sealed?”

Perrin Jones, an investigator in the Consumer Protection Division at the attorney general’s office, said that when negotiations were under way in 1967 to get an open records and open meetings law passed in Arkansas, personnel files and privacy issues surfaced often in discussions.

The number of concerns resulted in the numerous exemptions, said Jones, a newspaper editor before he joined the attorney general’s office.

“There are considerations that go on in the hiring and firing process that go beyond what is necessary for the public to know to make sure their money is being well spent,” Jones said.

Detective Tommy Hudson, a 14-year veteran of the Little Rock Police Department, utilizes the FOIA as president of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police.

“I think it’s a good law,” he said, adding that, even though it works to his benefit most of the time, there are some parts he wouldn’t mind seeing eliminated.

“Suspension and staff discipline — we still think that’s between the officer and the department,’’ he said. “We (FOP) don’t really agree that it should be released.”

Politics can play a role in disciplinary actions, he said. “If you got a good old boy system, sometimes you can get hammered” with unfavorable documents in a personnel file.