Balancing safety with your rights
Balancing safety with your rights
By John Estus
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Published: September 8, 2007
A decision Brent Rinehart labeled as an attempt to increase openness in government backfired Friday when he was asked to remove a document showing a floor plan of the county jail from his Web site.
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Jail floor plan's a public record
Rinehart said he saw no problem posting the document because it is a public record.
Prater said he was addressing a security concern and wasn't questioning Rinehart's legal right to post the document.
"This was not an open records issue,” Prater said. "Based upon recent events, including the recent near-successful jail break, it raised immediate concerns in my mind.”
A group of inmates took detention officers hostage and nearly escaped from the jail May 8.
In the e-mail, sent Friday to county commissioners and the county's information technology director, Prater said the document's presence on the Internet "poses an immediate threat.”
Where the plan came from
County staff eventually removed the floor plan, which was included in a comprehensive jail study posted on the District 2 Web site.
Documents prepared by third parties and delivered to government agencies become public records, according to the state Open Records Act. The Facility Group study was also presented during jail task force meetings, which were conducted under state open meetings laws.
"It's kind of strange,” Rinehart said. "It was presented in an open meeting, and it was presented to the board and accepted as a document by the Board of County Commissioners.”
The study including the jail floor plan was put online last week when Rinehart launched a redesign of the District 2 Web site. In a news release, he said the new design "raises the standard of government transparency” and included open records that have "never before been distributed to the public.”
The site includes records on the budget, jail and programs Rinehart has proposed.
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