Shelby Co. (ECWd) –
For those not familiar with the famous radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, he closed out most of his radio shows with interesting or surprising facts about a story he told. After sharing key details on what he was covering, he would say, “And now you know the rest of the story”.
We shared the names of Shelby County Board members for whom the county had no record of their Open Meetings Act Training Certificates in this article.
As outlined in the prior article, I contacted the clerk and asked if the board members had been contacted for their certificates.
According to the County Clerk, “I “reminded them on 4/10/2026 that OMA training is required. Chrissy is the only person that submitted anything so far.”
That response did not tell me an answer to the question, so I asked again.
“I appreciate that you reminded them, but I need to determine if they were asked to provide their certificates for the FOIA request.”
The response:
“I did not. I will send your FOIA to those members not providing their certificates to me today.”
Our prior reporting was based on exactly what we were provided by the FOIA officer to the county board. This particular request is one we routinely do, and it commonly ends up in what we call forced compliance. When they realize they don’t have the certificates, they do the training and then provide them.
However, Shelby County is not the norm by any fashion, as since that article and our questions to the Clerk, we have clear indicators that laws are being ignored by some.
The clerk provided two more certificates to us yesterday, as they were provided to her on April 23, 2026. One certificate was for Christy Wafford, who completed her training on January 18, 2025. The other certificate was for Judith Wood, who completed her training on April 14, 2026, which was almost an entire month past the date we asked for the specific record. That is what we would call forced compliance. She complied once the record was asked for, but not before.
The following board members and one former board member have yet to provide their certificates of training for the Open Meetings Act training.
- Austin Prichard
- Tricia Miller
- James Mitchel
- Larry Syfert
- Brent Wallace
- Gene Price
Who knows if they have taken their training or not, but if they have, they have now violated FOIA by not providing the applicable records.
Now that this process has been completed with the county, we can ask the Attorney General for any compliance records for the above-listed board members, and then we will see who has or has not completed their training. The reason we have not asked the AG before is that when doing so in the past, they asked that we exhaust our attempts with the public body first.
Now you know the rest of the story.
However, this story is sure to expose one of two things moving forward. Either non-compliance with FOIA or non-compliance with the law as it relates to taking the training.
Is anyone surprised?
