Can a city release a public employee's salary, hire date, position title, and name in response to an Arkansas FOIA request?
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This page answers the general question as of 2021. Ezel answers yours: what it means for your facts, under current Arkansas law, with citations.
Plain-English summary
The City of Mountain Home received a FOIA request for the salary, hire date, position titles, and names of all city employees for 2020. The custodian decided the records were personnel records subject to release with required redactions. Officer Timothy Boyd of the Mountain Home Police Department, as a subject of the records, asked the AG whether release was consistent with FOIA.
The AG agreed it was. Salary, hire date, position title, and name records are personnel records under Arkansas FOIA. The Young v. Rice balancing test favors disclosure when the records shed light on government workings, and salary information for public employees clearly does. The custodian was right to flag that sensitive personal information, like home address, date of birth, telephone number, and social security number, must be redacted under § 25-19-105(b)(13) and the AG's standard list.
The opinion also emphasizes that the requester's identity and motive are generally irrelevant. An employee's discomfort about salary becoming public, by itself, is not a legal basis to deny the request.
What this means for you
Public employees
Your salary, hire date, position title, and name as a public employee are part of the public record. You cannot keep them confidential under Arkansas FOIA just by objecting. The reasoning is straightforward: taxpayers fund public payrolls and have a right to know how that money is spent.
What you can keep private: your home address, date of birth, personal phone number, social security number, marital status, banking information, medical information, payroll deductions, and tax withholding details. These are required redactions under the standard FOIA list.
FOIA custodians
A request for "salary, hire date, position title, and name of all employees" for a given year is a routine FOIA request. The pattern: classify as personnel records, apply the Young v. Rice balancing test, redact the standard list of sensitive personal information, release.
Citizens, journalists, watchdogs
Records of public employee compensation are public. If a city refuses your request for salary data, the AG opinions provide direct authority that this information is releasable.
Common questions
Why is salary public?
Public employees are paid from taxpayer funds. Arkansas FOIA recognizes a strong public interest in knowing how public money is spent on public payrolls. Young v. Rice's balancing test consistently favors disclosure for compensation-related records.
What gets redacted?
Standard required redactions: home address, personal phone, personal email, employee personnel number, marital status, dates of birth, social security numbers, medical information, undercover officer identifying information, driver's license numbers, insurance coverage, tax withholding, payroll deductions, banking information.
Can my employer release my name without telling me?
The custodian usually notifies subjects of personnel-record requests, but that is procedural. The substantive decision (release with redactions) is the custodian's. Your objection is heard but is not a legal basis for denial when the records are public records subject to release.
Background and statutory framework
Personnel records under § 25-19-105(b)(12) are exempt only when release would be a "clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." Young v. Rice, 308 Ark. 593 (1992), supplies the two-step balancing test: identify any greater than de minimis privacy interest, then weigh it against the public interest, with the scale tipped toward disclosure.
Salary, hire date, position, and name records are routinely classified as personnel records and have routinely been ordered released. The AG has reached this conclusion in many opinions, including Op. 2009-204, Op. 2008-129, and the chain of similar 2021 opinions issued in this batch.
Citations
- Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(b)(12) (personnel-records exemption)
- Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(b)(13) (required redactions)
- Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(c)(1) (evaluation-records exemption)
- Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(c)(3)(B)(i) (AG opinion procedure)
- Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-103(7)(A) (definition of public records)
- Pulaski Cty. v. Ark. Democrat-Gazette, Inc., 370 Ark. 435 (2007)
- Young v. Rice, 308 Ark. 593 (1992)
- Stilley v. McBride, 332 Ark. 306 (1998)
- Thomas v. Hall, 2012 Ark. 66
Source
Original opinion text
Opinion No. 2021-039
June 9, 2021
Timothy L. Boyd
Mountain Home Police Department
c/o Sue Edwards, Human Resources Coordinator
720 S. Hickory Street
Mountain Home, AR 72653
Dear Mr. Boyd:
You have requested my opinion regarding the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"). Your request, which is made as a subject of the requested records, is based on Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(c)(3)(B)(i) (Supp. 2019). This subdivision authorizes the custodian, requester, or the subject of certain employee-related records to seek an opinion from this office stating whether the custodian's decision regarding the release of such records is consistent with the FOIA.
Your correspondence indicates that the City of Mountain Home has received a request under the FOIA for "records regarding the salary/compensation, hire date, position titles and names of any and all employees for the year 2020." You have attached a memorandum from the custodian of the records in which she has determined that the requested records are personnel records that are releasable pursuant to the FOIA, but that "sensitive personal information, such as address, date of birth, telephone number, or social security information," is not releasable. As a subject of the requested records, you ask for an opinion as to whether the custodian's decision regarding the release of the records is consistent with the FOIA.
RESPONSE
Because I have not seen any records that would be responsive to the FOIA request, I cannot opine about the releasability of any specific document or the need to redact any specific piece of information from an otherwise releasable document. I can state generally, however, that the bulk of the information requested (salary/compensation, hire date, position titles, and employee names) is subject to inspection and copying under the FOIA. Additionally, the custodian has correctly decided that sensitive personal information is not releasable.
DISCUSSION
The custodian has determined that the requested records are personnel records that are releasable pursuant to the FOIA, with sensitive personal information redacted. The Arkansas Supreme Court in Young v. Rice provided the balancing test for personnel records: weigh the public's interest in accessing the records against the individual's privacy interest, with the scale tipped in favor of disclosure.
The custodian's classification of these records as personnel records is consistent with this office's long-standing position that records of employees' salaries, hire dates, position titles, and names likely constitute personnel records. The custodian's decision to release these records with sensitive personal information redacted is consistent with the FOIA.
A FOIA requester's identity or motive for making the request is generally irrelevant to whether a record must be released. The test under the FOIA for the release of personnel records asks whether, as an objective matter, the records in question shed light on the workings of government for the general public. The custodian's analysis cannot be based on a requester's identity or subjective motive for wanting the record.
Sincerely,
LESLIE RUTLEDGE
Attorney General
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