A day after Attorney General Tim Griffin rebuffed an offer to try to settle his Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Arkansas Board of Corrections, Griffin is using court filings and the media reach of his office to demonstrate how serious he is about not attempting to resolve that case.
In a press release Wednesday, the attorney general said he was amending the lawsuit against the corrections board to add an illegal exaction claim in an effort to reclaim any money the board paid to Little Rock attorney Abtin Mehdizadegan or his firm, Hall Booth Smith, and prevent any future payment of money to him.
It’s largely a pointless public relations stunt, a way for Griffin to stroke his ego and score points in an intra-governmental conflict that most Arkansans don’t know about or care about. But it does suggest the fight isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Griffin sued the corrections board in December 2023, alleging it had violated the FOIA multiple times in the process of hiring Mehdizadegan to represent it in a separate dispute with Gov. Sarah Sanders over who has constitutional authority over the state corrections system. Typically, the attorney general would represent a state entity in a lawsuit, but the corrections board wanted to hire outside counsel, saying Griffin had a conflict of interest.
Griffin’s lawsuit said the board had illegally hired Mehdizadegan — and violated the open-meetings provisions of the FOIA in the process — by going into executive session and discussing behind closed doors whether to hire an attorney, rather than holding that discussion publicly as the law requires.
A circuit judge dismissed Griffin’s suit in January 2024 after Griffin failed to follow the court’s instructions to ensure the board had legal counsel, but the state Supreme Court recently reversed that dismissal and sent the case back to circuit court for further proceedings.
Mehdizadegan also represents the board in the separate case pitting it against Gov. Sanders, which challenges the constitutionality of two statutes. A circuit judge sided with the board in that case and enjoined the statutes from taking effect, leaving the corrections secretary under the control of the board. Griffin appealed that decision, but the Supreme Court agreed with corrections officials and left the injunction in place.
In a dissent in the latter case, Justice Shawn Womack took the opportunity to “remind the citizens of this state of their ability to protect themselves ‘against the enforcement of any illegal exactions whatever'” — an apparent suggestion that someone should sue the corrections board over their hiring of outside counsel.
Rather than raise that in the actual case where Womack made the suggestion, Griffin apparently decided to add an illegal-exaction claim to his FOIA suit. Corrections officials and state auditors have repeatedly confirmed that Mehdizadegan has not been paid for any of the work he’s done in the two cases, despite being owed more than $230,000 under the contract. Nevertheless, Griffin’s amended complaint refers both to prevent future payments to Mehdizadegan and recouping any payments already made.
Whatever would the people of Arkansas do without Tim Griffin to protect them from things that aren’t happening and then issue press releases bragging about it?
