Note to Florence and every other Arizona city and town: Stop making side agreements and secret deals to hide public records from … well … the public.
   Tribune writer Sarah Boggan has a story today about a court ruling in Pinal County that Florence must release a taxpayer-funded study of the possible purchase of the Johnson Utilities water system. Relying on this study, Florence officials offered $190 million to buy the water system, but Johnson Utilities decided to not go through with the sale. That’s when Boggan discovered that as part of the negotiations, Florence promised to tip off Johnson Utilities if anyone asked to see the study so Johnson could get a judge to keep it secret.
   Tuesday’s court decision reflects what the Tribune Editorial Board previously called for: access to general research about the water system which might have influenced Florence’s decisions while withholding any unique business practice details or proprietary information. This is what Florence should have done in the first place, instead of giving a private business control even temporary control of public records.
   Florence isn’t alone with this. When I covered Chandler in 1999 and 2000, the city attorney’s office routinely delayed release of any records related to city employees so those employees would have time to go court and try to block their release. No one ever did when I was involved, and the Tribune has subsequently demonstrated in court with Scottsdale that such employee records are open to the public and should be immediately released.
   More recently, Tribune writer Katie McDevitt spent weeks arguing with the Chandler Police Department about seeing reports on an internal affairs investigation of several officers who had looked up another officer’s personal vehicle license plate just out of curiosity, not for official business. I have to wonder if someone within the department was hoping the officers involved or their police union would go to court to keep the investigation secret. Once McDevitt firmly pressed Chandler police to show her what law allowed the agency to withhold the report, the city finally released it.
   Such tactics significantly test the patience of average citizens and interfere with the public’s ability to monitor what government does in our name. It should come to an end, now.

Sen. Linda Gray

   Arizona journalists frequently criticize state lawmakers for failing to respect the public’s right to know by passing laws that undermine the state open records law and enable government agencies to hide information.
   So it’s only fair that the Legislature receive some praise today for forcing more agencies to provide more access to critically relevant election information – campaign finance reports.
   On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed into law Senate Bill 1024, which requires the secretary of state, counties with more than 100,000 people and most cities and towns to post campaign finance reports on that government’s official Web site. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, shouldn’t impose any burdens on Secretary of State Jan Brewer or Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, as their agencies already make campaign reports available on the Internet. The secretary of state’s site has improved dramatically in the past two years after undergoing some major upgrades to make it more compatible with reporting requirements for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
   Maricopa County just posts .pdf versions of the original finance reports on paper. This forces everyone to hunt through each candidate’s reports and makes it impossible to search for information by donors or expenses. But still, it’s better than having to drive to downtown Phoenix every time you want to research a candidate or a particular race.
   Now, Pinal County and East Valley cities will have to start posting the same information online once the law goes into effect later this year. Hopefully, they will adopt a system more like the secretary of state’s, which requires candidates to file electronically instead of on paper. That approach is far more useful to just about anyone interested in how much money candidates are raising and who is contributing to them.

The Arizona Court of Appeals told Sheriff Joe Arpaio Wednesday that if he insists on being petty and vindictive with public records, his office is going to have to pay for it. Of course, that means we taxpayers will have to pick up another bill for Arpaio’s defiance.Arpaio has been locked into a rather stupid fight for almost two years with a newspaper called the West Valley View that covers several smaller communities including Litchfield Park and Avondale. In the fall of 2005, the sheriff’s office removed the West Valley View from its list of media outlets who receive news releases by email. The newspaper discovered this when the sheriff announced his investigators had solved a double-homicide in the newspaper’s coverage area, but the West Valley View only learned about it from reports by its competitors. Capt. Paul Chagolla, the main spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told a West Valley View editor that the newspaper never seemed to write any stories from the news releases, so apparently it didn’t need to receive them anymore.Translation: The West Valley View doesn’t write about many of the publicity stunts by Arpaio, so the sheriff’s office will punish the newspaper by denying it information that could be useful to its readers.This has turned out to a common tactic of the sheriff and his staff. Other newspapers such as the Sonoran News and the Phoenix New Times routinely have been cut off from written information in response to negative stories and criticism of Arpaio. In July, the news director at KPNX-TV, the Valley NBC affiliate, told the Arizona First Amendment Coalition that Arpaio was trying to black out that station as well.As a county sheriff, Arpaio routinely sends his news releases to a rather odd collection of places include Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. But he refuses to put any of them on his office Web site for the average taxpayer to read. This allows him to use information about his office as leverage against media outlets: push Arpaio too far and he could shut you out while aiding your competitors.The West Valley View refused to be intimidated. The newspaper filed a request under state’s open records law to receive all future news releases at the same time as other media outlets. When the sheriff’s office ignored the request, the newspaper sued.A trial judge said the law doesn’t require Arpaio to return the West Valley View to the email list. But the judge did require the sheriff’s office to make all news releases available on the same day they are sent to other media, even if someone from the newspaper has to drive more than 20 miles roundtrip to downtown Phoenix to retrieve them.That didn’t satisfied Arpaio, who argues the West Valley View should have to request to see each news release after they are issued and sent to others. So he appealed, confident the ruling would be overturned.Not only did the appeals court reaffirm the trial judge’s order, the court said Aug. 9 that Arpaio has no legitimate reason for his actions and directed his office to pay the West Valley View’s costs to pursue the lawsuit.Arpaio frequently promises to pursue lawsuits to the state Supreme Court, if necessary, and he’s stubborn enough to waste more tax money on this vendetta. But if he wants to do the right thing, he will put the West Valley View back on the email list. Or even better, start posting the news releases on the sheriff’s office Web site for everyone to see at the same time, like virtually every other government agency in the Valley. The "World’s Toughest Sheriff" should be able to handle the scrutiny.