Legislator sued over emails related to Lands Council

A organization that advocates for government transparency filed suit Monday against Thompson Falls Sen. Jennifer Fielder, alleging that the Republican legislator has violated Montana’s open-record laws.

The Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Accountability filed the complaint in Lewis and Clark County state district court. It also names the state’s Legislative Services Division in the complaint.

The group’s complaint alleges it has still not received copies of Fielder’s emails and other records that it requested a year ago.

Fielder told the Inter Lake she had been working on fulfilling the requests and on Monday had authorized releasing the last emails sought.

The Campaign’s request targeted documents over a period of three years related to the senator’s work for an advocacy organization that supports efforts to transfer federal public lands to the states. Fielder currently serves as CEO of the American Lands Council, based in South Jordan, Utah.

In the complaint, the Campaign for Accountability alleges that Fielder deprived the group “of its right to examine documents of a public body” contained within the Montana Constitution.

Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, said Monday that the initial public-records request was prompted after a similar inquiry into Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican who founded the American Lands Council and previously served as its CEO. That request found that Ivory had used his legislative email account to conduct business on behalf of the land-transfer organization, according to a story published last year in the Salt Lake Tribune.

“We wondered if similarly, [Fielder] was using her official position to benefit the nonprofit,” Stevens told the Inter Lake. “There’s also a question to be asked of, should she run an outside organization when she has such power as a legislator?”

Fielder pushed back against that narrative, dismissing the complaint as a politically motivated attack. She said the group showed its true intent by supplying the lawsuit to the media before it was served to her.

“That’s how they operate; they’re just trying to get a news story,” Fielder said Monday. “I recall they had done some other things to try and muddy the waters in other people’s elections — that’s pretty much what they are, is an arm of the Democratic Party.”

Stevens said he filed the initial records request in February 2016 with the Legislative Services Division. While the administrative arm of the Legislature is named in the suit, he said that Legislative Services Executive Director Susan Fox “seems intent on producing the documents,” but that Fielder has stalled repeatedly.

According to the suit, Fox told the Campaign for Accountability in March she was finishing it up, but wanted to consult with Fielder first. The suit states that some hard copies of travel records and a thumb drive containing some emails were sent to the organization later in the month.

Fox again notified the group in June that the documents should be finalized by the end of the month, the complaint alleges, but in July was told by Fielder that she was still working through them. Follow-up attempts to contact Fielder and Fox failed to turn up any records since March 2016, the complaint states.

Fielder said Monday that the delay was due to the large amount of documents she had to process, as well as technical difficulties involved in compiling them.

She said she provided additional documents later in 2016, and authorized the remainder to be sent Monday morning. Fielder declined to comment on whether the lawsuit compelled her to submit the remaining records, as Stevens contended.

While emails and other documents created by government officials in the Legislature are considered public information under Montana’s open-records laws, the state does not specify a required timeline for producing them in response to requests.

Stevens, whose organization frequently uses public-records requests to unearth information about government officials’ work, said many other states specify timelines in their statutes. In Oregon and New Jersey, for example, he said the official or agency receiving the request must respond within seven days with either the information requested, or a date when it will be available.

“Montana’s a bit unique, in that it doesn’t have any timeline whatsoever allocated,” Stevens said. But, he added, “There’s no situation in which a year is the norm.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.