I jumped the gun in this space a couple of weeks ago, it seems. I only thought Eureka Springs city attorney Forrest Jacobi had come to his senses regarding the city’s attempts to overcharge me for responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.

As it turns out, Mr. Jacobi was simply working in silence to double down on his ridiculous attempt to stymie my reporting on Eureka Springs city government.

Without repeating the original story, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes: I filed a fairly broad request for electronic information; city officials insisted that the information had to be manually redacted in hard-copy form; attempted to charge me 10 cents a page for nearly 2,100 pages; grew spiteful when I refused to pay that amount; and then finally appeared to give in and let me inspect the documents and take photos without charging me a dime.

I naively equated all that to a victory in principle. Then I arrived at work one morning last week to be informed that Mr. Jacobi had sent our parent company, CherryRoad Media, an invoice for nearly $17,000 for responding to our FOIA requests dating back to 2019.

Along with the invoice, Mr. Jacobi cited a portion of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act that allows respondents to bill requesters for the cost of personnel time in responding to FOIA requests — and here’s the key part — under narrow circumstances in which the requester has asked for information to be provided “in an electronic format to which it is not readily convertible.”

In fact, the portion of the law that Mr. Jacobi cited is included in a section titled: “Special requests for electronic information.” That doesn’t apply to any request I’ve ever made of the Eureka Springs city government.

I immediately reached out to the Arkansas Press Association’s director and attorney, as well as to Ellen Kreth, the owner and publisher of the Madison County Record in Huntsville whose FOIAbased journalism has won multiple national awards. Everyone agreed that Mr. Jacobi’s invoice is preposterous and worthless.

I will acknowledge that I have filed a lot of FOIA requests with the Eureka Springs city government over the years. It’s my job and the mission of our newspapers to keep our readers informed about what’s going on within their government, and when transparency is lacking, the FOIA is an important tool in bringing public information to light. I have no doubt that fulfilling FOIA requests isn’t especially entertaining for city officials, but the law is clear that the public has a right to certain information. The law is also clear about how the public can be charged for access to that information.

This whole episode has created a little buzz among journalists around the state, and it may ultimately prove to be more than a little embarrassing for Mr. Jacobi and for the city of Eureka Springs.That’s a shame, but it could have been avoided.

I suspect Mr. Jacobi’s actions have been motivated in large part by a desire to discourage me from requesting more information or shining any more light into dark corners where the Eureka Springs city government is concerned.

Unfortunately for Mr. Jacobi, as he will likely soon learn, trying to intimidate me or our newspapers is a fool’s errand.

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Scott Loftis is managing editor for Carroll County Newspapers. His email address is SLoftis@cherryroad.com.