Follow-up: Seeking 300+ Documents From Escambia County

Yesterday, Commissioner Ashlee Hofberger appeared on a local radio show, saying she had produced over 300 documents related to the recent library services director hire. The commissioner had also instructed county staff to give them to me. Unfortunately, I only received 15 pages.

This morning, I requested the 300+ documents.

From: Richard Outzen

Subject: Public Records Request

Date: May 1, 2026 at 9:27:16?AM CDT

To: Kaycee Lagarde

Kaycee,

Good morning.

Yesterday, Commissioner Hofberger appeared on Jeff Bergosh’s show on WPNN. She stated that she had turned over 300 documents to fulfill a record request made before mine, and she added that she had instructed county staff to give them to me, even though they covered more than my request for text messages from March 1, 2026, to March 7, 2026.

Please send me the 300-plus documents. If you have any questions about which documents, Commissioner Hofberger can explain.

Thank you.

-Rick

Rick Outzen, Publisher/ Owner
Inweekly

Here is the transcript from Hofberger’s interview with Bergosh:

Commissioner Ashlee Hofberger:

What initially happened was we had a public records request that came through on March 3rd, pretty much give me … And this was from Joe Vinson, ‘Give me everything that you have, text messages, emails regarding the library system regarding Christal.’ There were a few other keywords in there. And so I went through and anything that had anything to do with the library system or this hiring process or the interview process or conversations, I screen-shotted.

Not only did Melanie email those, she also uploaded those into the portal. So here was this public records request that was fulfilled for Joe Vinson. There was over 300 documents in this. We had hundreds of emails. We had all the text messages that you’re looking at, and we willingly gave those.

I am 100% form transparency. Fast forward, I guess it was about a week and Rick put in his public records request and there was emails. You can go back and look at those.

And I said, ‘We’ve already submitted all of this information. Can you not just use it?’

And they said, ‘Well, we need to transfer it over.’

I said, ‘Okay, so transfer it over.’ And it seems as if what happened is they did not pull everything out of that public records request and send it to Rick. I gave it. I willingly gave it. I was happy to get it. There was a gap from when we handed it over.

The commissioner later added:

And we even got some pushback and said, ‘Well, Rick’s asking for less than Joe’s asking for.’

And I said, ‘I don’t care. Give him everything. I don’t want to be wrapped up in this, ‘well, she didn’t send this.”