OnlyFans and an explanation of public records law

Let's head to Lake Havasu for a frustrating time.

Last month, a Lake Havasu teaching couple were fired from their respective schools for recording explicit videos for their OnlyFans channel on school grounds after hours.

If you missed this story, I don’t blame you. A friend brought it to my attention after Election Day when all of our focus was on who would win all the important races.

Samantha Peer was an eighth grade teacher at Thunderbolt Middle School and her husband Dillon Peer was a fourth grade teacher at Nautilus Elementary School.

Samantha had an OnlyFans account under the name “Khloe Karter” and claimed she blocked all of Arizona from being able to find her, but apparently her students still found her videos online and one noticed their desk being used as a location for certain activities.

Parents got involved and both teachers were fired.

Samantha eventually posted an apology video and the Lake Havasu Unified School District sent parents a statement letting them know of the firing, but the information provided was scarce. In the video, she claims she resigned after she was placed on paid administrative leave. Her husband was fired a few days later.

After learning of this story, I of course wanted to see what background info I could find through public records, but the records are not the focus of today’s story. Instead it’s about bureaucrats getting in the way of government transparency.

I sent a records request to the Lake Havasu Unified School District for any communication records pertaining to the firing of the two teachers through the district’s records portal.

The next day my request was denied for incorrectly assessing that my request was for “commercial” purposes.

• Commercial requests are for the purpose of sale or resale of the documents, as described in Arizona statute.

• Non commercial requests are for personal use like the media reporting a story.

I of course was dumbfounded this is why they tried to deny my request and immediately called bullshit.

Dillon Rosenblatt @DillonReedRose

Dear Arizona government officials: you should be operating as if public records requests are non commercial as your standard, not assume everything is a commercial request just because you'd rather not fulfill it. I'm not a lawyer, but I understand public records law pretty well.

Tosca Henry is the general counsel for Lake Havasu Unified. She’s also an elected city councilwoman in Cottonwood.

She’s the one handling public records requests and after several emails back and forth, doesn’t appear to understand (or care about) state public records law.

I tried to walk her through why she was wrong to deny my request, but she kept moving the goal posts.

This is how the conversation went:

After this explanation, Henry requested I send her a governor’s office opinion, which was an outrageous request and I pointed out as such and eventually wore her down to the point I thought my request might be fulfilled until she denied it outright on December 4 for a completely different reason.

“I have discussed your request with my client, which has reviewed its records.  The only records found that were responsive to this specific request were electronic communications with my office, which are privileged attorney-client documents and not disclosable pursuant to a public records request.”

I sent my original request fully knowing Arizona’s Family reported on the story which included correspondence from the school district. I, and other reporters, tend to do this out of curiosity to see if government bodies are intentionally withholding records. Never let them know how much you know right off the bat because *spoiler* elected and appointed officials lie all the time.

Having not shown my full hand I asked about this information and Henry tried to deflect that it wouldn’t have been under my original request, again an incorrect assumption.

“[Henry] is the type of lawyer who defaults to trying to find a way not to do something unless she is ordered to do it by a judge.”

– A lawyer who went to law school with Tosca Henry

She wanted me to put in a completely new request in order to receive the information and after I once again explained to her what my original request was seeking she sent me the correspondence alerting parents of the two firings, but only after she said it was “challenging” to communicate with me.

• Here’s the above letter for Samantha Peer

• And the one for Dillon Peer

Irked over this entire experience and curious as to why an elected official in Cottonwood is the general counsel for a school district in a neighboring county, I did two things.

1. I requested her contract with the school board to see how she got the job, how much she’s being paid, what her duties are and who else was up for the job if anybody (she receives the requests and would be in charge of sending it to me… that has not happened yet).

2. Started to poke around to some attorney and education sources as well as reporters who may have similar experiences with her or other school boards since this is a new area for me to explore with public records¹

On the second point I got back some interesting information.

One reporter I know said they had a similar experience with the Lake Havasu Unified School District and wasn’t at all shocked at what I was going through.

Some attorneys were also sketched out about her dual roles, but didn’t necessarily think anything illegal was happening. One pointed me to the “incompatibility doctrine” in the Arizona Constitution. It doesn’t appear her roles are incompatible.

I also heard that someone who knew Henry in law school said she “is the type of lawyer who defaults to trying to find a way not to do something unless she is ordered to do it by a judge.”

I can definitely see that.

Local governments –– especially in rural Arizona –– I’m sure aren’t used to a lot of media poking around, but it’s about time they get used to it because if other school districts, town councils, etc. respond to public records like Henry has done to I’m sure not just me, then it’s completely unacceptable and deserves to be highlighted.

1. I intend to dive much deeper into public records requests on hyper local levels like school boards across Arizona so please send me any ideas you may have or the gossip on school boards around the state. Dillon@fourthestate48.com