Haltom City mishandled visit by United Fort Worth

Editor’s note: This editorial, and its headline, have been corrected to reflect that Haltom City manager Keith Lane did not receive a records request from United Fort Worth before members of the group approached him in city offices. It has been updated to further include Lane’s description of events .

When a member of the public requests open records from the government, there is only one response that person should ever receive: “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am.”

Government records belong to us all.

So we’re confounded and troubled that a visit to deliver an open records request recently in Haltom City ultimately ended with something quite disturbing — a call to the police.

Last week, several members of United Fort Worth, a local immigrants’ rights group, delivered a records request to Haltom City seeking information regarding 287(g), a portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

United Fort Worth opposes the provision, which gives state or local law enforcement agencies authority to perform certain federal immigration law enforcement functions and to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group has been hand-delivering similar requests to neighboring cities and municipalities for the past several months.

After delivering the request to the city secretary’s office, one of the activists stood in the doorway of city manager Keith Lane’s office, holding a sign and stating the group’s objections. Lane said he was not aware of the group’s records request at the time. Still, his response was anything but helpful.

According to another United Fort Worth member who visited Haltom City that day, Lane accused the member of threatening him, and told him he would be arrested if he didn’t stop. Lane says he didn’t feel threatened but wanted members of the group escorted from the building because they were causing a disturbance..

A live webcast of the incident on the United Fort Worth Facebook page does not show any member of United Fort Worth threatening Lane or causing a disturbance. It does, however, show Lane looking annoyed and asking a staffer to call officers.

Lane says the webcast started after the first five minutes “when the guy kept sticking the sign in my face.”

Maybe so.

Either way, Lane’s reaction was far from appropriate.

Worse — it was potentially chilling. It could discourage others from seeking information that rightfully belongs to us all or from voicing concerns about the actions of government.

Lane could have handled the situation much differently. He could have offered to schedule a meeting or invited the members to a city council meeting.

He’s a public servant. Helping people is his job. We hope he sees it that way.

This story was originally published September 30, 2018 at 6:58 AM.