State official: Former mayor in the right over public records

Former Columbus Mayor Kristen Brown has had four complaints against the current city office holders for violations of public records laws reviewed by the state since she was voted out of office. Most of those complaints were justified says Luke Britt, the state’s public access counselor.

Brown has filed a lawsuit against Police Chief Jon Rohde for a request she made last year to see the reports about a police investigation involving a sheriff’s department official, his wife, and a county-owned vehicle. Britt found in Brown’s favor when that complaint was made to his office. Britt explains that he issued an advisory opinion saying that the police department did not provide enough information to meet the public access standard in that case.

Britt credited the city police for sending a representative to meet with him and to go over the information that is provided in the logs and what the minimum requirements are. However Britt did not know whether the city had made any changes to the amount of information it was providing.

Although the public access counselor’s opinions are not legally binding on the city, if a citizen has gone through the process of getting an advisory opinion from the public access counselor, they can recoup their legal costs if they succeed in their lawsuit.

City officials said they could not comment on the information provided in the logs because of the ongoing litigation.

The other complaints made by Brown against city officials included public records requests from the city Fire Department, the Clerk-Treasurer’s office and the Redevelopment Commission. Britt found in Brown’s favor in all of the cases except for the Columbus Fire Department request. He found that the fire department gave Brown all the information it had on hand related to a fire last August at Fox Pointe Apartments.

Since leaving office, Brown and a number of her supporters have filed many request for information from the new city government, enough that Mayor Jim Lienhoop suggested that they were doing so just to tie up city time and resources. However, Britt said that personal animosity or political conflicts do not play into the public’s right to have access to public records.