Casady has chance to do right thing in Bryant FOI incident

Arkansas 22nd Judicial District (Saline County) is represented by Ken Casady in the district attorney's office.

Part of a district attorney's job is to know when to prosecute a case himself and when to send in his deputies to do the job.

So far, Casady gets passing marks there. He has used good sense in knowing when to send in his more-experienced deputies to handle more-intricate cases that require finesse and legal experience that he does not yet have.

Another part of the district attorney's job is to use common sense when it is in the county's best interest to look the other way when, perhaps, a good chunk of the population is participating in brackets regarding the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments. (The one in which we participate here at the newspaper is for fun only online at espn.go.com. We safely can say that no one is danger of winning the national prize of $10,000.)

Finally, there is the part of the job that involves looking at the way fellow public officials conduct business and making the tough decision to call in unbiased officials from outside the county to conduct an investigation into such activity if it merits such action.

We believe Casady is coming upon such a time now.

Bryant city officials - read that City Council members and Mayor Larry Mitchell - have taken it upon themselves to seize the personnel records of Fire Chief Randy Cox and all firefighters who apparently were questioned by Human Resources Director Shayne King during her investigation into allegations of wrongdoing.

They asked City Attorney Nga Starzewski if they legally could name themselves and her as custodians of such records. She noted that, while she knew of no law that prevented such action, she would have to seek an attorney general's opinion to answer the question.

Aldermen were not deterred; they ordered the investigation records AND the personnel records (minus the medical records) of all involved seized. Claiming that they were doing so to preserve the records, they "sealed" them during executive session and ordered them moved from the office of King, where they have been secure, to the evidence locker at the Bryant Police Department.

It doesn't matter what the aldermen did in executive session - they violated the privacy rights of all involved just by seizing the records.

The fortitude and courage of Casady will now be tested as he makes the difficult decision of doing what is right or what is easy.

Sure, he can contend that violations of the Freedom of Information Act are difficult to prove, and he would be correct in doing so. But a more blatant public attempt to violate public employees' right to privacy or a successful effort to do so will not come his way again, regardless of how long he serves District 22 as its criminal attorney.

Regardless of what else Bryant aldermen choose to do in their struggle to maintain control over the fire department and the city, Casady must decide whether he wants to go on record as backing the Freedom of Information Act or looking the other way.

We hope he supports the Freedom of Information Act.