Does an Arkansas city have to release records showing how much comp time its employees have accrued, and can a city council member make that FOIA request?
Subject
Whether comp time accruals of city employees are subject to release under FOIA as personnel records, and whether a city council member can use FOIA to request such records.
Plain-English summary
A Cotter city council member asked the city clerk for "all the comp time accrued by city employees through September 2025." The clerk denied the request, treating the comp time totals as private personnel information. The council member pushed back: she said the records were not exempt and, separately, that as a sitting council member she should be treated as part of the city government rather than just a member of the public. State Representative Nazarenko asked the AG to sort it out.
The AG answered four questions, but only two really matter.
On the merits, comp time records are personnel records that are presumptively releasable. The opinion classifies "compensatory time" alongside salary, wages, sick leave, vacation time, and overtime, all of which the AG's office has consistently said are not "clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy" and so come out under the Young v. Rice balancing test. The clerk's "privacy concerns" defense was wrong on the law; comp time totals do not give rise to more than a minimal privacy interest, especially for public employees whose pay and leave are inherently subject to public oversight.
Caveats apply. The records may need redactions for narrow categories of information that are exempt: medical information about an employee (because comp time may be tied to sick leave or medical leave), personal contact information, employee ID numbers, marital status, dates of birth, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, insurance coverage, tax withholdings, payroll deductions, names of children/spouses/ex-spouses, net pay, banking information, and other "intimate financial detail." But the comp time totals themselves are not redactable.
On the council-member-as-requester question: the AG said any Arkansas citizen can use FOIA, and city council members are Arkansas citizens (they have to be qualified electors and residents under Article 19 § 3 and A.C.A. § 14-43-309). So a council member can file a FOIA request in her individual citizen capacity, even for records held by her own city. The Public Employees Political Freedom Act (A.C.A. §§ 21-1-501 to -503) protects her from retaliation for doing so. Important nuance: this means the council member gets the same access as any citizen. It does not mean the council member, by virtue of office, has special access to FOIA-exempt records. If the records are exempt under the balancing test, they remain exempt against a council-member requester too.
The fourth question (does state and federal law allow the clerk's withholding decision) was answered by reference to the first two for state law and respectfully declined for federal law (federal-law analysis is outside the scope of an Arkansas AG opinion).
What this means for you
If you are a city clerk or HR administrator
Update your FOIA workflow on comp time and similar leave-balance records. Default to release. The opinion is unambiguous: comp time is treated like salary, vacation, and sick leave, and those are presumptively public. The "privacy concerns" defense will not survive a court challenge.
Build a redaction checklist for these requests. The opinion lists the categories that must come out: medical information, personal contact info (personal phone, personal email, home address), employee IDs, marital status, DOB, SSN, driver's license, insurance details, tax withholdings, payroll deductions, names of family members, net pay, banking. Releasing the bare comp time number with these redactions is the correct response.
If the requester is a council member or other elected official, do not flag that as a reason to deny. Arkansas FOIA is requester-blind for personnel records. Treat the council member like any other citizen.
If you are an Arkansas city employee
Your comp time balance, like your salary and vacation accrual, is releasable to the public. So is your job title, your start date, and the structural details of your compensation. What is not releasable is your medical information (if comp time records reflect medical leave), your social security number, your personal contact information, your banking details, your tax withholdings, and similar intimate personal data. If your employer is releasing comp time records that include any of those categories without redaction, raise it with the city clerk or your HR office.
If you are a city council member or other elected official considering a FOIA request
You can file. You are an Arkansas citizen, and the FOIA does not exclude you because of your office. The city cannot retaliate against you for the request (Public Employees Political Freedom Act). But your office does not enable exempt records. If a record is exempt under the balancing test, it stays exempt against you too. If you actually need access to exempt personnel data to perform an oversight or governance function, the path is through the council's collective management authority over city affairs (e.g., A.C.A. § 14-43-502 in first-class cities) and the mayor's executive supervision authority (A.C.A. § 14-43-504), not through individual FOIA requests.
If you are a journalist or transparency advocate
This opinion adds comp time to the list of public-employee compensation records that Arkansas FOIA presumes are public: salary, wages, overtime hours, vacation, sick leave. Use it. If a city denies a comp-time request on "personal privacy" grounds, this opinion is your first cite. The city can redact narrow personal data; it cannot withhold the bottom-line comp-time numbers.
Common questions
Q: Why is comp time considered a personnel record rather than an employee-evaluation record?
A: Personnel records relate to an employee but are not created to evaluate their job performance. Comp time accruals are tracked for payroll and leave-management reasons, not to assess how well anyone is doing the job. They sit alongside salary records and leave balances on the personnel-record side of FOIA's two-track framework.
Q: What is the privacy "balancing test"?
A: The Young v. Rice (1992) test. Step one: does releasing this information give rise to "more than a minimal" privacy interest? If not, release. If yes, step two: does the public's interest in disclosure outweigh that privacy interest? The thumb is on the scale toward disclosure. For comp time totals, step one usually fails (no greater-than-minimal privacy interest), so the records come out without reaching step two.
Q: Can the city redact who specifically accrued how much, treating the request as releasable only as aggregate totals?
A: No. The personnel-records exemption protects only "clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy," and individual comp time totals do not meet that standard for public employees. Aggregate-only release would be a partial denial without a statutory basis.
Q: What if some comp time was earned in lieu of FMLA or sick leave for a medical condition?
A: The medical-condition information must be redacted (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(b)(2)), but the comp time total itself is not. Strip the medical context (e.g., a notation like "earned during recovery from surgery") and release the number.
Q: Can a city pass an ordinance making comp time records confidential?
A: This opinion does not address that, but a different one in the same series (Op. 2026-007) said no on a similar question: a city cannot create new FOIA exemptions by local ordinance because that conflicts with state law. Only the General Assembly can create FOIA exemptions.
Q: What's the Public Employees Political Freedom Act got to do with this?
A: It bars a city from disciplining or retaliating against a public employee for making a FOIA request in her capacity as a citizen. So a council member who makes a FOIA request cannot be punished by the council, the mayor, or the city for filing it. The Act does not expand what records the council member can see; it just protects the act of asking.
Background and statutory framework
Arkansas FOIA covers "any citizen of the State of Arkansas" (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(a)(1)). Public records held by public entities (including municipalities, A.C.A. § 25-19-103(13)(B)) are presumed public, with the burden on the custodian to identify a specific exemption (Pulaski County v. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 370 Ark. 435 (2007)).
Personnel records are open "to the extent that disclosure would [not] constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(b)(12)). The Young v. Rice balancing test (308 Ark. 593 (1992)) governs: more-than-minimal privacy interest at step one, public interest weighed at step two. AG opinions have consistently treated salary, wages, vacation, sick leave, overtime hours, and overtime compensation as personnel records that pass this test for disclosure.
Specific categories of personal information are exempt by statute or AG-opinion practice and must be redacted: personal contact information (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(b)(13)), medical information about treatment or diagnosis (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(b)(2)), employee personnel/identification numbers (A.C.A. § 25-19-105(b)(11) and AG opinions), marital status, dates of birth, SSN, driver's license, insurance details, tax withholdings, payroll deductions, family member names, net pay, banking, and other intimate financial detail.
City council members must be qualified electors and residents (Ark. Const. art. 19, § 3; art. 3, § 1; A.C.A. § 14-43-309), so they are Arkansas citizens and may use FOIA. The Public Employees Political Freedom Act (A.C.A. §§ 21-1-501 to -503) protects them from retaliation for doing so.
A council member's office does not give them special access to exempt records. Within first-class cities, the council collectively manages city finances (A.C.A. § 14-43-502) and the mayor supervises city officers (A.C.A. § 14-43-504); these structural roles, not individual FOIA requests, are the path to access exempt personnel data when collective oversight requires it.
Citations and references
Statutes:
- A.C.A. § 25-19-105 (FOIA exemptions)
- A.C.A. § 25-19-103 (definitions)
- A.C.A. §§ 21-1-501 to 21-1-503 (Public Employees Political Freedom Act)
- A.C.A. §§ 14-43-502, 14-43-504 (first-class city council and mayor)
- Ark. Const. art. 19, § 3; art. 3, § 1; A.C.A. § 14-43-309 (city council qualifications)
Cases:
- Young v. Rice, 308 Ark. 593, 826 S.W.2d 252 (1992) (balancing test)
- Pulaski County v. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc., 370 Ark. 435, 260 S.W.3d 718 (2007) (presumption of public-record status)
- Legislative Joint Auditing Committee v. Woosley, 291 Ark. 89, 722 S.W.2d 581 (1987) (three-element FOIA test)
Source
Original opinion text
BOB R. BROOKS JR. JUSTICE BUILDING
101 WEST CAPITOL AVENUE
LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS 72201
Opinion No. 2025-108
February 5, 2026
The Honorable Jason Nazarenko
State Representative
Post Office Box 192
Cotter, Arkansas 72626
Dear Representative Nazarenko:
I am writing in response to your request for my opinion concerning whether a city must release certain "comp time" records to a city council member.
You report that a city council member "requested all the comp time accrued by city employees through September 2025" and that the city clerk denied the request under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) based on "privacy concerns," asserting that the records were "personnel records." In response, the city council member cited to the FOIA in "declaring that her request was not for protected information." She also claimed that the "City Council was part of the governing municipality rather than simply part of the public."
In light of the above, you ask four questions:
1. Is comp time classified as exempt under pertinent employment law?
2. Can comp time accrued by city employees be released and disclosed to a government official or the public?
Brief response: To answer Questions 1 and 2 together, comp time accrued by city employees is best classified as a "personnel record" generally subject to release under the FOIA. Based on the information provided, I am not aware of any other FOIA exemption that would prevent disclosure. But if the records contain information reflecting an employee's illness or medical condition, that information must be redacted before release.
3. Is the City Council part of a municipality or the public at large?
Brief response: Since Arkansans citizens may send FOIA requests, and since Arkansas city council members are Arkansas citizens, such council members may use the FOIA.
4. Is the City Clerk's decision to withhold certain employee information consistent with state and federal law?
Brief response: With respect to state law, please see my response to your first two questions. A detailed analysis of federal law is outside the scope of an Attorney General opinion.
DISCUSSION
Questions 1 and 2. A document must be released in response to a FOIA request if all three of the following elements are met. First, the FOIA request must be directed to an entity subject to the FOIA. Second, the requested document must constitute a public record. Third, the document must not be subject to an exemption. The custodian is not required to compile information into a new record containing only the requested information.
The first two elements appear to be met here. The request for records was made to a city, which is a public entity subject to the FOIA. And the records at issue appear to be public records. Because these records are held by a public entity, they are presumed to be public records, although that presumption is rebuttable. I have no information, however, to suggest that the presumption can be rebutted, so I will turn to whether any exemptions prevent the documents' release.
For purposes of the FOIA, employees' personnel files normally contain two distinct groups of records: "personnel records" and "employee-evaluation or job-performance records." The test for whether these two types of documents may be released differs significantly. When reviewing documents to determine whether to release them under the FOIA, the custodian must first decide whether a record meets the definition of either a "personnel record" or an "employee-evaluation or job-performance record" and then apply the appropriate test for that record to determine whether the record should be released under the FOIA.
The custodian correctly classified the comp time records of city employees as "personnel records." This category includes salary and payroll records, pension and benefit records, and records of sick leave and vacation time.
Personnel records are open to public inspection except "to the extent that disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." While the FOIA does not define the phrase "clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy," the Arkansas Supreme Court has provided some guidance. In Young v. Rice, the Court applied a balancing test that weighs the public's interest in accessing the records against the individual's interest in keeping them private. The balancing test, which takes place with a thumb on the scale in favor of disclosure, has two steps.
First, the custodian must assess whether the information contained in the requested record is of such a personal or intimate nature that it gives rise to a greater than minimal privacy interest. If the privacy interest is minimal, then disclosure is required.
Second, if the information gives rise to a greater than minimal privacy interest, then the custodian must determine whether that privacy interest is outweighed by the public's interest in disclosure.
This Office has consistently opined that the following are personnel records subject to disclosure under the FOIA because they do not constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy under the above balancing test: information concerning salary, wages, or compensation; vacation time and sick leave; and overtime compensation, including "number of overtime hours worked." While no Attorney General opinion or state court has applied the personnel records balancing test specifically to "comp time" records, it is my opinion that such records are subject to release like those records concerning compensation, overtime, and vacation time.
You have also asked whether comp time is "exempt under pertinent employment law." No Arkansas employment-law provision independently exempts comp time records from disclosure. Although some federal employment laws, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, contain various confidentiality requirements applicable to employers, none of them require that comp time balances be kept confidential.
Based on the information submitted with your request, I am not aware of another exemption under the FOIA either. But if the records contain information reflecting an employee's illness or medical condition, that information must be redacted before release.
Additionally, a record that meets the test for release under the FOIA may still contain pieces of information that must be redacted, such as personal contact information of public employees; employee personnel numbers or identification codes; marital status of public employees; dates of birth of public employees; social security numbers; driver's license numbers; insurance coverage; tax information or withholdings; payroll deductions; names of children, spouses, and ex-spouses; net pay; banking information; and other financial "records that would divulge intimate financial detail."
Question 3. I understand this question as asking whether a city council member or the city council as a whole may make FOIA requests in the same capacity as the "public." Under the FOIA, "any citizen of the State of Arkansas" may make a request for access to records. A member of a city council in Arkansas must be a qualified elector and resident in the area he or she represents. Therefore, city council members retain their authority to request records under the FOIA. Thus, if the requested public records are not exempt from release, a city council member may request those records in the same capacity as any other Arkansas citizen.
Additionally, under the Public Employees Political Freedom Act, a city also cannot prohibit, discipline, threaten, or otherwise discriminate against a public employee for making a FOIA request in his or her capacity as a citizen.
But whether a city council member, by virtue of his or her position, may access FOIA-exempt records held by a particular city department is unclear. The FOIA does not expressly address such a scenario. Outside of the FOIA, a particular officer may be authorized to access exempt records by statute, "subpoena power, or otherwise in the course of their official duties." Based on the information provided, I am not aware of any law that would authorize an individual city council member to review personnel records that are exempt from release under the balancing test.
Question 4. With respect to state law, please see my response to your first two questions. A detailed analysis of federal law is outside the scope of an Attorney General opinion.
Assistant Attorney General William R. Olson prepared this opinion, which I hereby approve.
Sincerely,
TIM GRIFFIN
Attorney General