Little Rock’s mayor referred to as out for resistance to open data regulation continues

Matt Campbell’s effort to dislodge data associated to Mayor Frank Scott’s failed LITFest has ratcheted up a bit.

He filed motions Friday in search of to carry the mayor in contempt of court docket in his ongoing Freedom of Info Act lawsuit to get metropolis data.

In a single submitting, Campbell agrees to the town’s request so as to add Assume Rubix to the lawsuit as a result of it has failed to provide all of the data it generated underneath a contract issued by the mayor to stage LITFest. Particularly, Campbell seeks a contract for the canceled Ashanti live performance and data associated to a nonprofit, the Basis for Social Impression. It apparently was arrange by Assume Rubix.

Below its contract, Assume Rubix was supposed to offer all its paperwork to the town. This stuff haven’t been amongst paperwork offered to Campbell after the town legal professional’s workplace started making an attempt to satisfy Campbell’s request. Campbell has agreed to a delay in judicial motion on these data till Assume Rubix will be heard for the reason that metropolis can’t produce the data.

(On condition that the mayor’s former chief of workers, Charles Blake, works at Assume Rubix and that an organization govt is a Scott marketing campaign supporter, you’d assume the mayor may persuade them to satisfy the contract phrases. Maybe he’ll get an opportunity in court docket to deal with that sometime.)

Within the interim, nevertheless, Campbell wants the mayor held in contempt for the town’s failure to provide unredacted data of using the mayor’s private cellphone. The mayor has contended that cellphone shouldn’t be used for private enterprise, however it got here out at a Metropolis Board assembly this week that the mayor had referred to as Metropolis Director Capi Peck to speak to her about her unhappiness on the metropolis’s failure to offer details about a marketing consultant contract for a growth undertaking the mayor’s administration authorised with out metropolis board information. She stated he’d referred to as her on his private cellphone. The data apparently gained’t include texts and particular name info. However the metropolis needs to withhold info, Campbell says, that can reveal the quantity of information used, the variety of minutes used and the full variety of texts despatched and acquired.

Based mostly alone expertise with the Scott administration and its four-year customary response that there are not any cellphone or electronic mail data conscious of requests made to the mayor or his prime workers members, I’d welcome a ruling that clearly establishes what the town legal professional, if not the mayor or his underlings, is prepared to acknowledge: Texts and cellphone calls made to conduct metropolis enterprise are the general public’s enterprise, regardless of who owns the cellphone on which they’re despatched and acquired.

Choose Chip Welch has ordered the town to provide supplies on a rolling foundation and he has noticed, Campbell famous, that the buck stops with the mayor.

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