Clark Co. Park District – Director not FOIA trained –

Clark Co. (ECWd) -

In several recent Freedom of Information Act requests for public records, it became clear to us that the Clark County Park District Director, Charity Murphy, was not completely familiar with the FOIA Act.

In one request she insisted on redacting things that were not subject to redaction, in another she decided all on her own to print 2257 pages of documents - presumably to make me pay for them - when they were stored electronically, and they possess the capability to electronically redact them. I had requested them in electronic format and the law states they have to provide them in that format, or another electronic format, or on paper at the option of the requester. I was never given that option.

So now, the Park District will be involved in yet another FOIA lawsuit that will be filed next week for their alleged violation(s) of Section 6 of FOIA - "Authority to charge fees" and improper redactions.

Back to the purpose of this article,,,

With all of these obvious violation, I started wondering why, if the law is clear, can this continue to be violated.

So, someone FOIA'ed the Attorney General's office for a copy of Charity Murphy's FOIA training certificate - something that is mandatory if you are acting as a FOIA officer, or as an assistant FOIA officer.

The AG's office replied like we thought they would - "No records response to you request".

So here we have the executive director of a public body that cannot even become trained on FOIA in order to comply with the law. It is mandatory and can be taken online in less than an hour.