Updates on Public Information Requests to Somervell County

I got back, in the last week, two opinions from the Texas Attorney General regarding a couple of challenges I had to not receiving information from the County

The first one was regarding the phone records of Cyndi Gray. You can read about this here. The county pays for the phone bill for Gray but does no diligence to ensure that she is using the phone in the way the personnel manual specifies. The county does not ask for the phone records before paying for the bill. I believe this is a mistake and at one time in the past, it was possible to ask for the actual bill as it came from the company to be available through open records. However, Somervell County did not want to pursue this and the AG said

The county has submitted to this office the enclosed letter certifying it has conducted a
good faith search of information it owns, controls, or has a right of access to, and has found
no information responsive to your public information request. When a governmental body
represents to this office that it has no information responsive to a public information
request, we must accept its statement. Under the Act, the enforcement authority of the
Office of the Attorney General does not include on-site inspections of records held by
another governmental office. Accordingly, we will close our file on this matter.

I do not agree with this, as the county does have a right of access to bills for which taxpayers foot the bill. I believe if someone wants to be paid for a bill, he or she should have to show that they comply with the rules and the county should require it. However, that is not what Somervell County chooses to do.

2. The second public information request was regarding complaints either by Cyndi Gray or about Cyndi Gray. I know for a fact that these exist, because the outside attorney that Somervell County has contracted with to handle an anticipated lawsuit with Gray referenced the complaints.

When I asked for them, I was told by Danny Chambers that no information exists; he also asked the HR person, who had no records in her files, apparently. So, my question still is, since obviously these DO exist, and presumably since they led to contracting with an attorney, presumably Chambers saw them. Perhaps, though, he doesn’t have a copy, and I simply did not ask the right person who would be the holder of those documents. Given that Gray is so constantly in communication with Chambers, I believe it was a good assumption to think that he or HR had them. He took umbrage at the fact that I said I felt misled by him saying that no information existed, especially since it’s clear that that they DO exist. More than this, since they do exist… someplace (the attorneys have them) … why are they not available through open records and why did Chambers say there was no information when there was. At any rate, got the same response from the AG , which is basically, if the person you ask for the information says they don’t have the record, then the requestor is out of luck.