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Updated Jun 21, 2016, 9:21 pm  Originally posted Jun 21, 2016, 3:45 pm

Dylan Smith TucsonSentinel.com

Forced to acknowledge that she has not revealed records of public business she conducts using her personal accounts, Supervisor Ally Miller quickly left a Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, even as officials continued to discuss her month-long stonewalling of reporters' questions about ex-staffer Timothy DesJarlais' bizarre sham news website.

Her acquiescence in the face of strong questioning by the other supervisors was a tacit admission that her earlier response to TucsonSentinel.com's request for records was based on a falsehood.

The Board voted 4-0, with Miller absent, for county staff to "immediately" respond to requests for records —some of which were made more than four weeks ago. The Board also stated that any individual not complying with the expedited full release of public documents would be "acting in their own private capacity" — which would mean that the deep pockets of the county would not back their legal defense.

The Supervisors also voted to release a June 9 confidential opinion from the Pima County Attorney's Office that informed the District 1 Republican that there was no legal grounding for her insistence on charging thousands of dollars for paper copies instead of complying with requests for electronic copies. Miller had attempted to charge $1 per page for thousands of pages of documents before even beginning to review them, and even continued to insist on charging for paper even after she was directly informed she could not provide printouts instead of electronic files.

"Any records related to county business whatsoever will be provided," Miller said Tuesday. "Anything I have on my personal devices will be turned over."

Prior to leaving in the middle of the oft-heated meeting, Miller did not address the issue of the public records contained in the personal email and Facebook accounts of her staffers, nor the public records that may be possessed by her former staffer, DesJarlais.

Miller has slow-walked records requests from TucsonSentinel.com and other news organizations, and only within the last week finally provided documents — which were tardy, incomplete and blacked-out in a slipshod manner. And she has not yet provided any of the documents requested relating to her personal email address and Facebook account — where she is known to conduct much of her business as a supervisor.

Just Monday, Miller stated that she and her staff "do not use their private cellphones/smartphones, or private email accounts, for county business," Board Clerk Robin Brigode told TucsonSentinel.com.

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Tuesday morning, questioned by other members of the Board, Miller abandoned that position and said she would release information from her personal accounts.

"It's an embarrassing situation," said Supervisor Ray Carroll, "... one supervisor stonewalling at the expense of the public trust and the public coffers."

Supervisor Sharon Bronson, the board's chair, said she wanted the records issue addressed at the meeting because she "became increasingly concerned about the potential risk, liability to the county if we did not comply."

Miller did not provide any records until after the possible release of the confidential admonishment from the County Attorney's Office was put on the meeting agenda last week. The next morning, a deluge of electronic files were sent to reporters.

Tuesday, members of the Board asked reporters, including me, for input and comments on the ongoing difficulty of obtaining the requested records.

Miller did not answer the question when I asked her when she would release the public records she has yet to turn over, which were first requested for on May 18.

Instead, she diverted her remarks to outline her previous responses, saying "on average it has taken 13.7 business days" to supply public records. State law mandates that public records be "promptly" provided to anyone who asks to inspect them. At another point during the meeting, Miller said she first received a request on May 20. Another time during the meeting, she said she first received a request on May 19.

Moments after being pressed about releasing the documents, about five minutes before noon, as I and Star reporter Joe Ferguson continued to respond to queries from the Board, Miller gathered a stack of binders and announced that she had an "urgent appointment" and had to leave the meeting. She quickly left the room through a door behind the dais.

Board of Supervisors meetings, which begin at 9 a.m., routinely run past noon. Miller did not say what meeting was more important than the supervisors dealing with the pledge of a media lawsuit to compel compliance with Arizona law.

Unusual meeting

The supervisors had been scheduled to discuss the issue in executive session, obtaining legal advice behind closed doors.

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Instead, Supervisor Richard Elias moved to talk in front of the public.

"This is about public records; it should be done in public," he said.

Miller seconded the motion to hold the discussion in front of the attendees at the meeting, and the rest of the Board agreed.

Some of the supervisors asked members of the press, including me, to speak about the ongoing difficulties in inspecting public records regarding Miller's office and the conduct of her now-former aide, DesJarlais, who quit his post as reporters continued to probe why he launched a sham news site under an alias while masquerading as a reporter. DesJarlais conducted some of his activities related to the "Arizona Daily Herald" while on the clock as a county employee.

Missing pages, missing files

Generally, reporters refrain from directly taking part in public meetings, but the Star's Ferguson and I responded to those requests, providing information and details about the slow pace of responses, and how some documents have been provided only in part or been improperly redacted, and how some requests have been ignored.

Ferguson, speaking toward the end of meeting after Miller left, noted that she had claimed in a radio interview to have processed some 8,000 pages in response to requests but that "nowhere near" that number been provided to the public.

Judging by her numbers, there are "6,000 documents that we don't have and have never seen," he said. "We're concerned about that just as much as redactions."

The District 1 Republican had already left the meeting, but the Star reporter asked the rest of the Board, "Did she lie?" about the number of pages, or are there documents that have not been turned over?

In response to the supervisors, I ran down the lengthy delays to our requests for documents, which began on May 18, after Miller did not respond to a phone call about DesJarlais' activities. I told them that none of the requested metadata — the generally hidden portion of an email that tracks its route through the Internet — had been turned over with any emails. The state Supreme Court has held that metadata is an integral part of a public record and must be supplied when requested.

I noted the oddly missing files from DesJarlais' county computer. A county IT staffer tried to explain that away by claiming that when someone closes a browser window the information is automatically purged — "the cookies and all of those things do go away." Yet other computers in Miller's office — except hers, as she has said she rarely turns it on — contained extensive browser histories, in stark contrast to DesJarlais' computer.

With few exceptions, the history from his computer in Miller's office only listed sites visited on June 3 — his last day working there. Although computer files from Miller's office had been requested on May 18, it was not until June 7 that county IT staffers retrieved the web histories and other browser files from those computers.

On June 9, those files were released to TucsonSentinel.com. I explained to Board how DesJarlais' browser history was nearly barren despite thousands of other records in his computer indicating he was using the Internet, and that "the only reasonable explanation for that was that someone erased it."

Questioned Tuesday by Carroll about the lack of browser history and whether there were backups, county IT chief Jesse Rodriguez said, "We looked, and there was nothing there."

When we received the files in which DesJarlais' computer activity didn't add up — with cookies and cached images shown from dates on which there was no browser history provided — we made a followup request, asking for any and all backups of Internet logs and histories. The county provided logs from its Websense anti-spam/porn filter, but no additional browser histories. Those files list which web servers were visited, but not which pages or files on each site.

Rodriguez told the supervisors that web histories are kept backed up for 90-120 days. "Any information that is held in a computer, we still keep," he said.

TucsonSentinel.com has filed another followup request for that information.

I told the supervisors of our concerns about the inconsistent and legally unfounded redactions that had been done on many of the documents that were released, with email addresses — including those used by Miller — having been blacked out with a marker.

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I emphasized that, despite our first request for information having been made May 18, we had not received any response at all regarding the public records to be found on the personal devices and accounts of Miller and her staff until being informed just on Monday that she had no such records.

Board Clerk Robin Brigode emailed just after 4 p.m., saying that "Supervisor Miller and current District 1 staff (Di Filippo yet to respond) reported they do not have county-issued cellphones/smartphones and do not use their private cellphones/smartphones, or private email accounts, for county business."

It's well-known that Miller conducts much of her work as a supervisor using private emails and messages from her personal Facebook account. Former employees have provided TucsonSentinel.com with substantial documentation of her practices.

Indeed, even the documents provided by Miller disprove her claim, as they contained an exchange — forwarded to another Miller aide's county email, which otherwise used entirely personal email accounts — between her, DesJarlais, and Miller staffers Sherry Potter and JoAnn DeFilippo, regarding a press release that was posted on the supervisor's taxpayer-funded website.

Further, last week Miller provided DesJarlais' "confession" about the Herald as a public record. Although the email addresses were blacked-out on the paper copies that were released, Miller's address to which it was sent was clearly her personal Yahoo email.

It's not illegal in Arizona to use private communications for public business. It is a clear violation of the law to not release those public records on request. It is also against the law for a record to be "destroyed or improperly maintained," with "potential criminal sanctions," Chief Civil Deputy Pima County Attorney Thomas Weaver told the supervisors.

Miller dodged the question when Supervisor Sharon Bronson asked if she would release the public information stored in her personal accounts in an electronic form as was requested.

She also said that "I can't speak for other people in my office; I can't control their personal devices."

"Supervisor Miller told the clerk ... just yesterday that her office doesn't use personal email to conduct county business," Carroll said. "Yet the very email record she's turned over the media that was accidentally not fully redacted proves that she does use personal emails to conduct county business."

Miller wasn't happy with Carroll's using documents to demonstrate that she uses her personal email for government business.

"I am not going to be interrogated by Supervisor Carroll, I've answered the question," she said.

Later in the meeting, after Miller had walked out, Carroll said that, "I don't want to cover up for Supervisor Miller any longer. I haven't been doing that to this point — I want to know, how do we get to the bottom of this."

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Supervisor Ramon Valadez, who crafted the motions to put the Board's weight behind full disclosure of the relevant records, said that Miller "clearly told us in public, on the record, that she will turn over that information."

Miller's actions are "putting the county in jeopardy of a lawsuit we can't win," Carroll said.

"There seems to be this cloud of omission that's floating around up here, and a member of the Board who couldn't even stick with this discussion," Elias said.

After discussing the issue, the supervisors voted 4-0 to instruct staff to speedily release the records that were requested. They also voted to "direct the county attorney that it is the official position of this Board to fully comply with the public records requests," and "make it very, very clear .. that any position that differs from fully complying with the public records request is ... one person acting in their own and private capacity."

The effect of that would be to withdraw the county's legal backing if Miller and her staff do not turn over the requested documents.

Criminal investigation

Miller and DesJarlais each filed FBI crime reports when they were touting the story that a different person was responsible for the "Herald."

"It kind of raises the stakes to make a federal case out of it," I told the supervisors Tuesday.

Miller also contacted the Tucson Police Department, after I provided her with a contact for the head of TPD's cyber unit at her request.

Two weeks ago, Miller said she did not contact the Pima County Sheriff's Department about her allegations because her office is located "in the city." She said then that she had not contacted TPD because she did not know if they investigated online crimes.

Tuesday, she said that TPD "has an active investigation" and that she "met with them for about an hour ... we are waiting to hear back from them."

"The FBI ... I have a phone call in, and my contact there will be coming in to Pima County, hopefully in the near future, and see if there's any criminal activity," Miller said.

Demands for payment flouted attorney's advice

Despite the obvious conflict of interest for an elected official to be redacting records requested from her office, Miller has said she was using a marker to black out information on the printed-out copies of emails herself.

Miller billed the Star $1,171.80 for emails, and said that the records that had not been provided to TucsonSentinel.com would cost nearly $1,200. Both news outlets informed county officials that we would not pay for long-delayed records that should be readily provided at minimal cost in an electronic format.

Miller repeatedly told county officials that she would not release documents until news outlets paid, even as legal advisors told her she was on shaky ground.

On May 24, she informed Board Clerk Robin Brigode that TucsonSentinel.com should be charged $1 per page for 1,900 pages. On June 6, she dropped her price to $665 for the same number of pages.

On June 7, she had the clerk convey to TucsonSentinel.com a bill for $1,199.45 for 3,400 pages. That same day, Deputy County Attorney Kelly Friar wrote her that "the government is not allowed to charge for the costs associated with either the search for the records or the redaction process."

The next two days, Friar again sent emails to Miller, telling her that she could not levy charges for paper documents when electronic records had been requested.

Miller continued to not turn the records over.

On June 9, Friar sent Miller the privileged memo that was made public Tuesday, telling the District 1 supervisor that her stance "would not be likely to prevail in court":

In light of the statutory language, the court rulings set forth here and in the countless other cases, and the fact that once redactions are made the County has the ability to scan the pages and produce them electronically at a very small cost to both the government and the requestor, we believe that you would not be likely to prevail in court if you continue to insist on providing paper copies at 35-cent per page.

Yet, Miller continued to not turn the records over.

On June 12, the supervisor wrote to the board clerk: "again, once the 35 cents per page has been paid, we will proceed with the request."

In another email to Brigode the same day, she wrote, "My staff will not commence work on public records requests until the 35 cents per page has been paid."

Last week, board attorney Thomas Weaver asked that the records issue be placed on this Tuesday's executive session agenda. Last Thursday, Miller released thousands of pages in electronic form, which the Clerk of the Board's Office emailed.

Other requests — notably the public documents to be found in the personal emails, Facebook accounts and text messages of Miller and her staff, including former staffer DesJarlais — remain unfilled.

Both TucsonSentinel.com and the Star, as well as representatives of other news outlets, have stated we are willing to press our case in court to prompt the full disclosure of records as required by state law.

Work ahead

Bronson said she wants to convene a meeting with county officials and members of the press to craft an improved process for dealing with public records requests. She also pushed the other supervisors throughout the meeting to address the immediate issue of the records from Miller's office.

Bronson said that the county lacked a "very cohesive policy," especially regarding redactions, and said she had hoped the Board would vote for an immediate release of all of the requested documents.