Arkansas prison opponents demonstrate value, strength of public records law

Lest anyone doubt the power and purpose of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, a scrappy group of grassroots activists fighting to stop Gov. Sarah Sanders from imposing a 3,000-bed prison on bucolic Franklin County have shown once again how the FOIA can be a useful weapon for a David standing up to a Goliath. 

Barely a month after the Franklin County and River Valley Coalition formed, the group has pried thousands of pages of emails, text messages and documents from the Sanders administration about the prison decision, which was dropped on area residents without warning on Halloween.

The document search has revealed how state officials worked actively for months to disguise the selection and purchase of an 815-acre tract north of Charleston, which was chosen despite not meeting criteria set out at the beginning of the search. 

Their FOIA search also turned up an email sent by Jonathan Duran, deputy director of the state’s Geographic Information Systems office, in which he referenced a South Park clip that lampooned area residents as ignorant, self-interested rednecks. The subsequent outcry got him chastised and tossed off the project.

Adam Watson, a Franklin County resident active in the coalition’s FOIA campaign, said he’s been surprised at how much information their requests have already uncovered, and “we’re just now getting into the weeds.” The group still has 23 outstanding FOIA requests, one of which is expected to produce 60,000 documents.

The documents show that officials involved in the process took steps to disguise what they were doing and were wary of how the project would be perceived, including one text message that talked about taking steps to “control” the narrative to “protect the governor and the [Board of Corrections].”

The evidence uncovered also makes it clear that officials fixated on the Franklin County property once they learned it was on the market in early July, even though it did not meet key criteria set out when the search began. In less than a month, the Arkansas Development Finance Authority had signed a purchase contract with the land’s owners,  Aaron and Haley Geissinger.

‘Something we don’t know about’ 

Watson said he marvels at “the efficiency of state government when it’s working to meet its own goals in private,” with at least six state agencies coordinating a selection process without consulting county residents or their political leaders.

Watson said there has been “wild” speculation in the county about why state officials are so dead set on putting the prison on the Charleston site, despite heated opposition from area residents, city and county officials and legislators representing the area.

“There’s something about this property that we don’t know about,” he said, adding that the coalition intends to ferret out what that might be. “It strains belief that there is anybody in state government who thinks that it’s a good idea to put this project in this location.”

Presentations circulated in January and February by the Department of Transformation and Shared Services, as the site search began, showed the preferred criteria included a county population of at least 30,000 to secure an adequate workforce; a location within two miles of an interstate or federal highway; and water and sewer infrastructure to meet a demand of 300,000 to 500,000 gallons a day.

In January, the preferred locations listed for the prison included Pulaski, Faulkner, Conway and Sebastian counties. By February, five possible sites were identified along the I-40 corridor through the River Valley, including a site in Conway County (slightly larger than Franklin County) that was described as “top tier site if not for the very limited workforce numbers.”

Those sites were all near I-40, close to municipalities with water and sewer service and, except for Conway County, met the population threshold. The Franklin County site, by contrast, is in a county of 17,000 people, more than 20 miles from a federal highway, where residents use septic tanks. TSS officials acknowledged the site’s deficiencies in a July email: “Workforce numbers are not great, and accessibility is not great.”

By November, after the land sale closed, a summary of site characteristics sent to the Board of Corrections showed the criteria had morphed into “feasibility of wastewater treatment,” with pipeline upgrades likely needed to transport water 20 miles from Ozark.

The coalition’s FOIA requests have also illustrated the culture of secrecy surrounding the project, including discussing a code name for it and suggesting Sanders herself make an “off the schedule” visit to the site during a trip to Van Buren in August. (It’s unclear if she went.) 

‘Continue to be relentless

Staffers at the AFDA also took steps to hide the project from public disclosure as the purchase was being approved by the agency’s board.

When an ADFA staffer sent an email reminder “to put the land purchase for the new prison on the September board agenda,” the agency’s chief counsel, Jake Bleed, responded: “It’s not for a prison tho. It’s a land purchase in franklin county and we are purchasing it to pursue our own corporate purposes.”

During a contentious town hall meeting in Charleston in November, Joe Profiri (who became the governor’s adviser on prison issues after the Board of Corrections fired him as corrections secretary in January) insisted secrecy was needed to avoid a “bidding war” for the land — a questionable assertion given that the ADFA’s purchase contract with the sellers had locked in a $2.95 million price back in July.

“I see that as another example of them thinking that the people here would be too stupid to figure out what’s going on,” Watson said.

Sanders and other state officials have insisted that the prison is a wonderful economic development project for the area, an argument that has been singularly unpersuasive in this close-knit rural community where residents relish their peace and quiet. 

As Watson puts it,  “We’re just fine. We don’t want it. We don’t need it …  There’s a reason we live out here.”

The coalition scored what it saw as a minor victory earlier this month when the Board of Corrections leased the prison site from ADFA for $1 a year, rather than buying it. While that decision means the purchase isn’t subject to legislative review, it also allows the board to walk away from the site before spending more money on it.

Meanwhile, despite the odds stacked against them, the coalition continues to sift through documents, buttonhole legislators and organize and mobilize, trying to make Sanders acutely aware that, in Watson’s words, people in Franklin County “did not roll over like the state expected them to.”

“We’re going to continue to be relentless,” he said.