Jeffrey Calhoun
No. 18-R-107
State of Nebraska Office of the Attorney General
March 27, 2018
Thurston
County Attorney; Petitioner Jeffrey Calhoun
Dear
Mr. Calhoun:
This
letter is in response to your correspondence received by us
on March 9, 2018, in which you requested our review of a
response to a public records request made by you to the
Thurston County Attorney ("County Attorney") for
records of that office. We consider your letter to be a
petition for access to records under the Nebraska Public
Records Statutes, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 84-712 through
84-712.09 (2014, Cum. Supp. 2016). Following your initial
contact, we sought further information from you, which you
provided on March 13, 2018. As is our normal practice with
such requests, we then contacted the party against whom the
complaint was made. In this case, we spoke to Tammy
Maul-Bodlak on March 14, 2018 and received copies of the
relevant public records requests and responses from her on
that date. Ms. Maul-Bodlak also provided us with a written
response to your petition on March 19, 2018. We have now
considered your complaint and our findings are set forth
below.
FACTS
Our
understanding of the facts in this matter is based on your
public records requests, the responses of Ms. Maul-Bodlak,
your petition submitted to this office, and the response of
the County Attorney to your petition..
As an
initial matter, you made your request under the Federal
Freedom of Information Act. The Freedom of Information Act,
or FOIA, is a federal law, codified at 5 U.S.C. § 552,
which generally provides that any person has the right to
request access to federal agency records and
information. You are seeking information from the County
Attorney, an agency of Thurston County, Nebraska. FOIA does
not apply to county agencies. The Nebraska Public Records
Statutes, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 84-712 through
84-712.09 ("NPRS"), govern access to records of and
belonging to the County Attorney and provides this office
certain investigatory powers. Our office has no authority
under FOIA. Consequently, our analysis will be related only
to the NPRS and not to FOIA.
Additionally,
your petition seeks our assistance in receiving records from
the Winnebago Police Department and the United States Bureau
of Indian Affairs. However, neither of these two agencies
fall...
