One agency's records response time
Taking a look at the Arizona Department of Gaming's public records log
If you’ve been an early subscriber or followed me for a bit you know how slow Arizona state government –– with Doug Ducey at the helm –– is at turning over public records.
It’s not just the governor’s office, which I wrote about for the inaugural post, but it extends to his entire administration and even beyond.
It’s a testament to elected and appointed officials not giving a shit about government transparency even though it’s us who are in charge. We deserve to know what goes on behind the scenes of government on every level and the more competent the government the more transparent they are.
It’s not a science and really it’s pretty easy to be transparent with the public.
While there are many facets of Arizona government that take a long time to hand over public records (including the records that make them look bad, which is most) there are some areas of the state that actually do a good job.
When I exclusively covered the courts, the Arizona Supreme Court was one of the best and fastest at providing public records. I don’t ever remember having to wait more than one week for communication records and in a lot of cases I would receive records the same day I requested them.
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office under Stephen Richer is another one that is pretty swift when it comes to turning over records, and for the ones that may take a bit of time, they are communicative.
The Arizona Department of Education under Kathy Hoffman also is quick to deliver public records even after this unfortunate mishap from 2020.
But as it’s been said many times, the governor is the CEO of the state and the state government is a reflection of the person in charge. That person is Doug Ducey. I wrote in August about how long it typically takes his office to fulfill public records requests and it shows a pattern of slow walking.
In the three-plus months of Fourth Estate 48, I still have not received a single records request back from Ducey’s office even though most of the requests are Ducey’s monthly calendars –– records his office used to fulfill frequently but now all of a sudden seem incapable of doing so.
I don’t take it personally, despite what some of his current staffers may think of me and my coverage (past and present) of his office. It’s not just me. They aren’t the friendliest bunch to all reporters and avoid them when possible. I even wrote about it last year.1
Ducey once memorably said he wants to run Arizona like a business, but what he didn’t say was that business would be far from transparent and keep its “customers” or citizens in the dark.
But that’s why this newsletter exists and why nearly 1,000 of you choose to subscribe (with many of you choosing to pay despite me never putting a single post behind a paywall).
Ducey’s office is slow to turn over records, but so is his entire cabinet.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety also has not turned over any records and its requesting portal is needlessly more complicated than any other. The Arizona Department of Health Services has on several occasions told me my records requests are not of high priority and therefore will pretty much just take their time turning them over. The Arizona Department of Corrections is one of the most incompetently run agencies probably in the entire country and public records is only a fraction of that.
But today I chose to focus on the Arizona Department of Gaming, a state agency very few people know exist and even fewer actually care about. It got plenty of coverage in 2021 during Ducey’s successful effort to expand the tribal gaming compact to include mobile sports betting giving the state apps like DraftKings and FanDuel (which in turn provided rich sports owners with even deeper pockets and very little to show for it in state coffers).
I wanted Gaming to be a guinea pig of sorts into how state agencies respond to records requests using a middle tier agency that gets little coverage. I requested four months worth of its public records log and even getting that record fulfilled was like pulling teeth.
What it told me is the agency does not keep an organized account of its public records log. It only tracks when a record was requested, by whom and what the record is. Though that last piece of information is incredibly vague and sometimes just a word or two.
There’s no way to know how long it took to turn over, or if the record even was fulfilled or denied. Included are nearly 60 records requested between January and April of this year and it took several months for me to even receive this spreadsheet.
Arizona government can –– and should –– do much better. It amazes me how much better Florida is with transparency in public records.
Unlike my newsletter, this story is behind a paywall. If you can’t read it let me know and I’ll send it to you. It’s a story I’m proud of and it aged very well in the past 18 months.
A few weeks before the election, Katie Hobbs told an audience that she intends to bring more transparency to government. It was unprompted, which I thought was terrific. I am eager for you to find out how she operationalizes that pledge.