Turner’s ex-press secretary indicted
Former aide is charged with violating public records law over email request
Mayor Sylvester Turner’s former press secretary, Darian Ward, was indicted by a grand jury this week, accused of violating state law by failing to turn over public records in response to a reporter’s request late last year.
The indictment, handed up Thursday and released by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office, says Ward misrepresented the number of emails responsive to a reporter’s request for correspondence about her personal business activities and unlawfully withheld public records.
Ward resigned in January, weeks after news broke that she had been suspended for withholding the records and because the records showed she routinely had conducted personal business on city time.
Ward, who had joined former Mayor Annise Parker’s staff as press secretary in 2014 and served in the same role for Turner, sent or received roughly 5,000 pages of emails about personal business from her government account over the last four years of her tenure at the city. Many of those dealt with reality shows she was pitching to television networks or a charity for which she served as an adviser.
Ward did not respond to a request for comment, but her attorney, Chris Tritico, said his client was “shocked and saddened”
to learn of the indictment. Ward’s handling of the records request at issue was legal, Tritico said, because the request targeted only personal information on her public email account, none of which was “public information” that needed to be released, as the records were not “in connection with the transaction of official business.”
That the correspondence occurred on city time on a city computer was a separate violation, Tritico said, but that fact alone does not make the personal emails part of the “transaction of official business” to require their release.
“We presented what we thought was a very compelling packet showing the grand jury that Ms. Ward did not commit a crime,” Tritico said.
Ward is charged with failure or refusal by an officer for public information to provide access to public information, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, six months in jail or both.
“Mayor Turner expects every city of Houston employee to comply with the Texas Public Information Act,” mayoral spokeswoman Mary Benton said, noting the mayor is on a trade mission to South America this week. “Questions about today’s grand jury decision should be directed to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.”
Though he signed off on Ward’s two-week suspension, Turner initially brushed off criticism of her actions.
“She’s done her job extremely well since I’ve been here, over and above,” the mayor told reporters in early January. “I have no question with regard to her work performance.”
Beyond conducting personal business from her city email, Ward in 2015 used Houston’s publicly funded television station, HTV, to promote contestants in a reality show she was developing. Ward also did not pay full price when she rented HTV’s studios that year to film a pilot for another show, records show.
One similar case
Turner responded to those revelations by calling Ward’s actions “unacceptable and against policy,” adding that subsequent violations of city rules “could result in termination.”
Ward abruptly resigned Jan. 26, hours before the release of another batch of emails showing she again had tried to block the release of some of the personal business documents she had sent on city time.
Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said it is common for officials to stall the release of records or impose unreasonable charges for the documents’ release without technically violating the law, adding that there are many more cases in which requesters suspect the act is being violated but cannot prove it.
“It is very important that officials are taking the Texas Public Information Act seriously,” Shannon said. “Whatever comes out of this indictment, it shows that attention is being focused on the Public Information Act and the importance of adhering to the act.”
Joe Larsen, a Houston attorney with expertise in public information laws, said indictments under the act are “astonishingly rare,” saying he is aware of only one similar case since the act was passed in 1973. In 2003, the superintendent of Llano Independent School District was found guilty of withholding financial records from a newspaper and a county commissioner; he was fined $1,000 and given a sixmonth probated jail sentence.
“The letter and the spirit of the law are being violated every single day somewhere in the state of Texas. Absolutely no question about it,” Larsen said. “Government officials are lying all the time that they don’t have information that they in fact do. You can’t prove otherwise unless you sue them, really.”
‘Sends the right message’
Trent Seibert, the Texas Monitor reporter whose request Ward stymied last year, said he was happy to hear the district attorney’s office was taking public records laws seriously.
“I think there are significant and deep problems when it comes to public officials following open records laws in this town,” Seibert said, “and I hope this sends the right message.”
Councilman Greg Travis said he was surprised at the indictment because he has seen many records requests handled poorly in his time as a lawyer without indictments being issued, and because he had assumed Ward would be indicted for misusing her office, not withholding documents.
“I’m sort of glad to see it because we do need to keep people accountable, and if they don’t respond to TPIA requests, then you’re basically subverting democracy in a sense,” Travis said. “They have every right to see the documents and see what we’re doing.”
Councilman Mike Knox agreed.
“I’m glad to see that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office is interested in applying the law fairly and equally to everyone, including people with highpaying, high-powered positions in public office,” he said. “It makes a good statement to all of us as elected officials and those who serve the city in various capacities that we’re not above the law.”
Councilman Jerry Davis said he wished both that Ward had handled the situation better and that the matter had not resulted in an indictment.
“I think it’s a sad situation that it’s come to this,” Davis said.
The indictment puts Turner’s decision to suspend rather than fire Ward in a new light, Travis said.
“I don’t understand his reason or rationale for holding on for so long in the face of something that was so egregious,” he said. “This isn’t the mayor’s issue. It’s Darian Ward’s issue — she screwed up — but I don’t know why it took so long to get rid of her back then.”