Editorial: Attorney general gets official rebuke

District Court discovery commissioner Thomas Biggar minced no words in his decision Monday that recommends $3,500 in sanctions against the state attorney general's office. Biggar believes "frivolous objections" were made regarding information requests from Mike Anzalone, who filed a lawsuit in February 1998 against Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and some of her deputies.

Anzalone alleges he was forced to leave his job as an investigator in the attorney general's office after he refused to participate in an intelligence investigation of state gaming regulators. Del Papa had insisted repeatedly that her office didn't conduct such an investigation, but last month one of Del Papa's deputies admitted to Biggar that intelligence in fact had been collected regarding the criminal slot cheating probe of Ron Harris, a onetime electronics expert who had worked for the state Gaming Control Board.

It is up to a court to determine the merits of Anzalone's lawsuit, but it indeed is disturbing that Del Papa and some of her deputies maintained for so long that there was no intelligence probe. It is hoped that Biggar's recommendation sends a strong message not just to the state's top law enforcement official, but to all government agencies of the need to be aboveboard in responding to requests for information.

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