Project Mustang Open Meeting Dispute Leads to Arrest in Claremore Oklahoma

When Public Records Come With a $17,000 Price Tag

Claremore sought more than $17,000 for records connected to a man's arrest at a Project Mustang meeting. Oklahoma's Public Access Counselor said the city's approach did not comply with state open-records requirements.

By Miami News-Digest 

CLAREMORE, Okla. — What began as a disagreement over three minutes of public comment has grown into a much larger dispute over government transparency, access to police records, and how much an Oklahoma citizen can be charged to see what his government has collected about him.

On Feb. 17, Darren Blanchard attended a special Claremore City Council meeting concerning Project Mustang, a major data-center development proposed for the Claremore Industrial Park.

Blanchard opposed the project and signed up to speak.

Like other members of the public, he was given three minutes.

When his allotted time expired, Blanchard continued speaking. He argued that applause and reactions from the audience had consumed some of his time and said he was “reclaiming” it. Contemporary reports describe him continuing beyond the limit as city officials directed him to stop. Claremore police ultimately removed him from the meeting and arrested him for trespassing.

Blanchard pleaded not guilty. The municipal charge carries a relatively small monetary penalty — reportedly $200 — but Blanchard has said he intends to fight the case and has characterized his arrest as retaliation for protected speech. No court has yet established that the arrest violated the First Amendment.

The dispute, however, did not end with the handcuffs.

It moved into Oklahoma's public-records system.

A $17,125.44 records estimate

As part of his effort to examine what happened, Blanchard and his attorneys requested public records from Claremore, including police body-camera footage connected to the arrest and records concerning previous disturbances at public meetings.

The city responded with an estimated price:

$17,125.44.

According to correspondence later obtained and reported by 404 Media, approximately $16,540.44 of that amount was attributed to legal review of roughly 2,800 potentially responsive records. Another $585 represented an estimated 15 hours of staff searching.

The materials potentially subject to review extended beyond the arrest itself and included records concerning Claremore's interactions with security contractors and Rogers State University, where the February meeting took place. The city also identified more than 10 hours of body-camera footage requiring consideration.

Claremore's attorneys defended the extensive review in part on privacy grounds.

In correspondence with the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, attorneys for the city also raised concern that documents released to Blanchard or people associated with him could receive broad distribution, including through social media.

The city also accused Blanchard's attorney, Katie Griffin, of maintaining an unnecessarily burdensome records request.

Blanchard's legal team disputed that characterization, telling 404 Media that the request had, in fact, been narrowed. According to the attorneys, the city's estimate increased after that narrowing — from $16,540.44 to $17,125.44.

That disagreement eventually reached the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office.

Griffin submitted the fee dispute to the Attorney General's Office, where Assistant Attorney General Anthony Sykes serves as Oklahoma's Public Access Counselor.

According to the response reported by 404 Media, Sykes found that Claremore had not properly posted the fee schedule required by Oklahoma's Open Records Act and therefore could not impose the search fees in the manner proposed.

He also questioned the city's assertion that approximately 15 hours of searching would constitute an excessive disruption of essential governmental functions.

And the Public Access Counselor challenged Claremore's broad privacy rationale for reviewing and redacting footage taken at a crowded, open public meeting before it could be released.

The city was advised to provide access promptly rather than condition production on payment of the five-figure estimate.

The disagreement gets to the heart of Oklahoma's Open Records Act.

Under 51 O.S. §24A.5, records of public bodies are generally open for inspection unless a specific exemption applies. Public bodies may recover reasonable direct costs associated with copying or mechanical reproduction.

Additional search fees are permitted in more limited circumstances, including requests made solely for commercial purposes or requests that would clearly cause an excessive disruption of essential government functions.

The law also requires public bodies imposing fees to maintain the required fee schedule. Oklahoma agencies routinely post such schedules publicly and file them with the appropriate county clerk.

The distinction is important because Oklahoma has long recognized that public-record fees should not become a financial barrier separating citizens from information about their government.

An Oklahoma Attorney General opinion dating to 1988 concluded that members of the news media seeking records in the public interest cannot be assessed search fees when investigating whether public officials are properly performing their duties.

Blanchard's case presented an even more unusual circumstance: he was requesting government records directly connected to an incident in which the government itself had arrested him.

There is another element to the controversy that reaches back more than a decade...

This is not the first time Claremore has faced litigation over public access to police video involving an arrest.

In Ward & Lee, P.L.C. v. City of Claremore, an Oklahoma law firm sought video of a client's 2011 arrest by the Claremore Police Department.

The dispute eventually reached the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals.

The appellate court held that the arrest video was a public record subject to inspection under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. The court reversed the lower court and remanded the case, also recognizing the successful requester's entitlement to reasonable attorney fees under the Act.

The law governing police records has evolved since that litigation, and the 2013 decision does not automatically resolve every issue surrounding Blanchard's request.

The historical parallel is difficult to ignore...

More than a decade before the Project Mustang controversy, Claremore was already litigating the question of whether citizens could obtain police video documenting an arrest.

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The records dispute is occurring against the backdrop of a development far larger than Blanchard's municipal trespassing case.

Project Mustang is the data-center development being pursued by Beale Infrastructure within the #Claremore Industrial Park.

In May, Claremore announced that its City Council had approved a Tax Increment District agreement supporting the project. The city estimated that the development could produce $3 billion to $4 billion in private investment over five to seven years.

The project has since advanced further...

On Aug. 28, the City of Claremore announced that the property transaction had closed and agreements governing development and financial commitments had been finalized. The city said the project would move into permitting, regulatory review, and subsequent site activity and construction as requirements are completed.

Residents are not debating an abandoned proposal. They are asking questions about a multibillion-dollar development that is continuing to move forward.

The City of Claremore argues that the project will produce substantial investment, employment, infrastructure improvements, and payments benefiting local public entities. Some residents, including #Blanchard, have questioned the project and the process surrounding it.

Those competing views are precisely the type of dispute in which access to public meetings and government records assumes particular importance.

The facts already documented raise serious questions independent of Blanchard's ultimate guilt or innocence.

Why did accessing the records generate an estimate exceeding $17,000?

Why did approximately 2,800 records require more than $16,500 in legal review?

What specific information required protection?

Why was the possibility that the records might appear on social media considered relevant to the city's response?

And why, according to Oklahoma's Public Access Counselor, had the city not properly posted the fee schedule needed to impose the disputed search charges?

Those questions matter beyond Claremore...

The Oklahoma Open Records Act exists because government transparency cannot depend entirely upon the discretion of the government body holding the records.

The statute itself reflects a broader principle: citizens are entitled to inspect the workings of their government, subject to legitimate and specifically recognized limits.

Blanchard's underlying trespassing case may eventually be decided by a municipal court. His First Amendment claims may ultimately succeed or fail based on facts and law that have yet to be adjudicated.

The public-records controversy has already produced a more fundamental question:

When a citizen wants to examine the government's conduct — particularly government conduct that resulted in his own arrest — how high can the price of access become before the cost itself becomes an obstacle to transparency?

In Claremore, that price was initially calculated at $17,125.44.

Oklahoma's Public Access Counselor said the city could not justify charging it.

And for every Oklahoma citizen who may one day need records to determine what his or her government did, why it did it, and whether it followed the law, that dispute reaches far beyond one individual, one meeting, or one data center.

Miami News-Digest will continue following the Blanchard case, the public-records dispute, and developments surrounding #ProjectMustang.