By: E&P Staff The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., has filed a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, which allegedly would not respond to requests for public records information involving crime statistics, the Mayor Frank Melton's security budget, and his authorization to board an aircraft armed.
The lawsuit alleges that city officials refused to release a wide range of documents relating to the mayor, including an expense report for a trip to the Bahamas and papers that showed weapons training for the mayor. Reponding to repeated requests by the paper, the city only gave one written response to the requests -- a heavily edited document related to homicides in 2005.
?We see this as a last resort and we can?t continue to see our public requests made in good faith ignored,? Executive Editor Ronnie Agnew was quoted as saying in a Clarion-Ledger story about the suit. Melton charged the paper with "inaccurate and inept" reporting and said he would turn the documents over to the public, but not to the newspaper.
According to the paper, the mayor "could not point to any law which entitled him to deny requests for that reason."
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