PHOENIX — Some of what was found on Arizona Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump’s cell phone is a public record, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday.
But whether those texts sent and received by the state utility regulator will see the light of day remains unclear.
On Tuesday, attorneys for all sides in the public-records dispute provided a list of what was recovered from Stump’s phone to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner.
Several hundred texts were listed, though many appear to be duplicates. The Attorney General’s Office used multiple computer programs to find messages that Stump conceded he deleted from his state-issued phone.
There appear to be no recoverable texts that fall within the dates in the public-records request filed by the group calling itself the Checks and Balances Project, which has also sued to compel disclosure of the texts.
Those dates were ahead of the 2014 Republican primary, during which a phone log showed the existence of repeated texts between Stump, two candidates he was supporting for the commission, the head of a group sending money from anonymous donors to help elect them, and an executive of Arizona Public Service, a utility regulated by the commission. The two candidates Stump supported were running against pro-solar-energy opponents.
Tim LaSota, Stump’s attorney, said the new finding about the time frame should be the end of it. LaSota, along with commission attorney David Cantelme, now wants the lawsuit dropped.
But Dan Barr, who represents the Checks and Balances Project, said “not so fast.” He thinks there’s more information to be had.
The report given to Warner raises a bigger issue.
If the judge concludes the attorney general is correct — that there were text messages that could fall within the definition of the public records law — it raises the question of whether Stump violated that law by deleting them.
But even that is not black and white.
Cantelme has argued that even texts that are public records do not have to be preserved forever. He said once the usefulness of the information has passed, it can be deleted.
Yet if it turns out the deleted messages were recovered — and if Warner determines they are public — then anyone could ask to see them.
The dispute that now goes to the judge centers on the question: what is a public record?
It is undisputed that all of the texts were recovered from Stump’s state-issued phone.
Courts have said, however, the fact that a document or message is on a government device does not determine whether it is public. Instead, they said the deciding factor is whether it deals with public business.
So a text to a friend proposing a lunch date would not be public, even if sent from a state-issued phone.
Stump has contended nothing he deleted was a public record.
But Mia Garcia, spokeswoman for Attorney General Mark Brnovich, said the analysis by the agency’s attorneys found that some of the recovered messages cannot legally be exempted from disclosure.
LaSota and Cantelme disagree.
Garcia acknowledged most of the recovered messages do not fall within the dates requested by the Checks and Balances Project.
But Garcia said Brnovich believes the court should look at everything recovered, including not specifically requested by Barr, to put an end to the question of what the public is entitled to see of the deleted messages.
“We’d like this resolved as quickly as possible,” she said.
The findings also open the door to Barr, or anyone, expanding the public records request to go beyond the specific dates.
