Out in the open

Stadium talks reflect importance of access

The future of War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock as a site for Razorback games was hardly the highest-priority topic on the minds of University of Arkansas fans last week. That “honor” went to the future of the football program and UA athletics in the wake of Jeff Long’s dismissal as athletic director.

But on the morning of Long’s firing, the Democrat-Gazette’s

news staff detailed as much as $10 million in upgrades UA officials estimated to be needed for the 69-year-old, 54,120-seat stadium in Little Rock if there is to be any chance the Fayetteville college will continue to play football games there.

In late October, Long and UA Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz made PowerPoint presentations regarding games at War Memorial to individual members of the UA board of trustees and to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said he believes it to be “beneficial” for the Razorbacks to have games in the Capital City.

Those meetings involved discussions about the pros and cons of games at War Memorial vs. games at 76,000-seat (and growing) Razorback Stadium on the school’s Fayetteville campus.

The future of Little Rock games has been a sore spot for some fans for years, ever since Long’s predecessor, the legendary Frank Broyles, began the slow migration of most games to campus. The UA remains obligated to play one more Southeastern Conference game at War Memorial. After that, who knows?

It sure seems the subject of these football games is an important matter of public policy. Governors have chimed in on their preferences as have legislators. Wouldn’t it be informative and interesting to the average taxpayer and ticket buyer to listen in on a discussion between UA officials and the UA board of trustees on the issue?

We suspect fans would be Hog wild about the idea.

But did you notice how Long and Steinmetz went about their informative sessions regarding Little Rock games? They met face to face with trustees individually, not as a group. Why does that matter? Because getting the trustees together as a group constitutes a public meeting under state law, and it would have to be open to the public and media.

The way they met was legal. Let there be no doubt about that. But it’s also a clear signal as to the orchestrations public officials will go through to avoid the limelight when they really don’t want to speak openly on a sensitive subject. When people are willing to take great pains to meet individually with a panel’s members when a single meeting would be more efficient, it’s obvious efficiency isn’t the goal. Secrecy is.

Thank goodness, however, for the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, which gives taxpayers, including reporters, the right to request and inspect existing public documents. It was a collection of such documents and emails exchanged between UA officials and the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism that enabled this newspaper to clue the public in about UA estimates of the changes the consider necessary for War Memorial.

Arkansans ought to know about such discussions, right? The trustees and administration chose to exclude the public from their discussions. If Arkansas had a weaker Freedom of Information Act — and there are lawmakers and others paid by your taxpayer dollars who constantly work to weaken it — it would be extraordinarily challenging to uncover information so vital to the discussion of public policy matters.

The debate over games in Little Rock vs. games in Fayetteville rages on, and our editorial board doesn’t attempt to settle that with our words today. But we do highly recommend Arkansas taxpayers/voters give consistent support for a strong Freedom of Information Act. Its vitality benefits all, while efforts to weaken it benefit special interests and create serious roadblocks to unearthing information some would just as soon never reveal.

The stadium debate, and issues of far greater importance to the state of Arkansas and local residents, ought to be played out as the public policies they are, not treated as though they are matters for a select few in the state to decide.