He said, he said
It never surprises me that whenever someone takes issue publicly with what someone else said, the resulting back-and-forth becomes inevitable.
So it is with the saga of citizens engaged in their 40 Days for Life protest in Northwest Arkansas. They recently tangled with the state’s Highway and Transportation Department over the group’s right to stand peacefully in front of Fayetteville’s Planned Parenthood office near the corner of Joyce and Arkansas 265 with signs expressing their views.
You may recall the highway department sent a representative to inform the group that the way they were exhibiting their signs violated state law. That flap naturally made news, prompting me to offer a personal opinion. I basically sided with the protesters and their First Amendment right to carry their signs and stand along the road.
Randy Ort, public information guru for the ATHD, sent the following message disagreeing with my analysis. At the risk of redundancy, you can read his comments for yourself:
“As much as I don’t want to perpetuate this story, I must respond to your one-sided editorial in Saturday’s paper regarding the interaction between our AHTD employee and the Fayetteville group protesting (your word) along Highway 265. Our employee was doing her job when she addressed the group about signs that were placed in the ground in highway right of way, a clear violation of state law regardless of the message or the messenger. The group acknowledges they were placing signs in the ground, and published photos to confirm this practice. Our employee was asked to provide a copy of the laws prohibiting that activity, and she provided hard copies to the group two days later. The code she provided includes a provision about potential fines. To clarify, the AHTD does not censor messages and does not have the authority to issue citations or levy fines. Had we felt the group was being confrontational, we would have contacted law enforcement to intervene.
“The group chose to engage the services of the Thomas More Society who wrote the AHTD a letter and asked for a response,” Ort continued. “Our Chief Legal Counsel responded and clarified the statutes cited. In no way did we ‘ back-pedal and admit well after the fact that it had been mistaken’ as your article states.
“It appears there was confusion regarding the communication between our employee and the group. But let me be clear—we do not and did not condemn the group for their activities or their message, other than placing signs in the ground. By the same token, we do not, and nor should you or anyone else, condemn the actions of our employee for enforcing state law. I found your story today to be extremely one-sided, which doesn’t surprise me given that you never contacted me, or to my knowledge, anyone else with the AHTD.”
Apparently Ort didn’t contact the protest groups to clarify its experience because now those at the site are claiming his version is inaccurate.
Ray Hines and his wife serve on the leadership team for 40 Days for Life. He wrote: “I want to thank you for what I feel is very fair coverage of events that transpired recently regarding the displaying of signs in the Arkansas State Highway public right-of-way in front of Planned Parenthood. I was disappointed to hear you were chastised by Mr. Ort for your coverage, but I expect that goes with the territory of writing an opinion column. It’s not my interest to write a rebuttal to Mr. Ort’s opinion. … I did want, if only for your sake, to clarify the fact that we were indeed told that we were prohibited from displaying our signs, even if they are hand-held.
“We were there with two other volunteers when the AHTD employee pulled in front of where we were praying on Monday, February 23 at about 1 p.m. We gave her our attention. She politely but confidently informed us we weren’t allowed to display our signs in the [state’s] public right-ofway. Being surprised to hear this, having already obtained clearance from the City of Fayetteville, we followed up with a variety of clarifying questions. Among those was whether we were allowed by law to hold the signs in our hands. She confirmed that we couldn’t display signs, not approved by the state, even if we held them in our hands.
“I thanked her for her polite and professional disposition and said I believed she was doing her duty in communicating the law according to her best understanding of the law,” Hines said. “I assured her that it was our intention to comply with the law, but that surely the law allowed us to hold signs in the public right-of-way. We asked for documentation. She looked in her files for some written form of the statute, but failed to find any with her. She promised to return later with that documentation. … I was not there when she returned on Wednesday with documentation, but I am told that only hand-held signs were being displayed at that time.
“I, with Mr. Ort, respect the AHTD and their role in regulating our state highways and right-of-ways. I believe the employee was doing her job honorably and deserves our respect. But there was no misunderstanding regarding the fact that we were told that state law prohibited us from holding our signs in the public right of way.”