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Monday, September 05, 2005

Ind. Law - More on "Public access to police records stymied by Evansville union contract"

Today, the Evansville Courier& Press editor, Paul Mcaulifee, writes:

As you may have read in a Wednesday story by Jennifer Whitson, the three parties jointly submitted a public records dispute to the Indiana public access counselor.

The dispute grew out of a lawsuit by a man named Dan Hudson against Evansville police officer Brett Worthington and Deaconess Hospital. Hudson contended that Worthington had attacked him and held him against his will during a disagreement about Hudson's patient rights at a Deaconess facility. The lawsuit is pending.

The suit prompted Courier & Press staff writer Jimmy Nesbitt to ask for records of past disciplinary actions.

That's when he ran into a provision in the contract between the city and the FOP, bargaining agent for Evansville's police. It requires that the city not release information about any police officer from any internal affairs file or personnel file. If the information is subpoenaed, the city must fight that subpoena.

The wording has been in the contract for at least 14 to 15 years, says the city's chief attorney, corporation counsel David Jones. He also contends it's part of the noneconomic portions of the contract that aren't subject to negotiation in contract talks.

We don't believe that the contract can supersede state law, which says the public is entitled to the factual information behind final disciplinary actions against public employees.

Given that disagreement, what could have ensued was a long legal battle with the Courier & Press and FOP spending money, and - perhaps most important - the city spending a bunch of taxpayer money in litigation costs.

Jones suggested a remedy: Submit the matter to the state's public access counselor, Karen Davis, with the agreement that all parties would consider her decision binding.

The access counselor, the state's expert on public records and open meetings law, normally has only advisory power.

The FOP and its attorney, Charley Berger, agreed to those terms, as did the Courier & Press. The matter now is in Davis' hands.

However it turns out, all parties will be able to feel they were willing to be part of a solution, not just part of a problem.

The FOP matter was the second time the city administration and this newspaper have collaboratively submitted a dispute to the public access counselor.

Last year the access counselor was able to give us some guidelines on what records of crimes and related matters should be open.

Since then, the Courier & Press and the Police Department have been working within those guidelines to solve records issues.

Background. Last Wednesday the ILB posted this entry titled "Ind. Law - Public access to police records stymied by Evansville union contract; access to Public Counselor informal opinions."

I refer interested readers back to that entry, which concluded with my position that informal opinions of the Public Access Counselor (PAC) (which, along with the Counselor's formal opinions, are of course public records) be made readily accessible to the public. I included my earlier correspondence with the PAC, where I urged: "at a minimum publish online a timely and complete index of all your letter/e-mail informal opinions." Without such an index, the public has no way of knowing what informal opinions have been issued and so cannot easily request to see them.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 5, 2005 08:46 AM
Posted to Indiana Law