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County officials who are responsible for maintaining area emergency-response plans in Arizona aren't willing to share that information with the public even though it's required by federal law.

And even when they are willing, actually finding current plans and getting officials to provide copies is difficult and time-consuming.

As part of a national audit, journalists and volunteers across the country — including two from the Arizona Daily Star — descended on local emergency-management offices and asked for the Comprehensive Emergency Response Plans for their communities. Officials said "no" more than one-third of the time, and one in five provided only partial reports.

None of the five Local Emergency Planning Committee offices contacted in Arizona provided the complete plans. Some offices refused to give any information at all.

The Environmental Protection Agency lists Sahuarita as the custodian for Pima County's plan. It even provides a contact name and a telephone number there. It took a week to figure out Sahuarita doesn't have the document; the Pima County Emergency Management Office has it.

After questioning why a reporter participating in the audit wanted the document, county emergency-management officials said she would have to fill out a public-records request form — only to discover they didn't have such a form available in their office.

It took the county another 19 days to make some documents available, but they declined to provide the full report.

Congress passed a law about two decades ago requiring every community to develop, update and make public plans for action in cases of chemical or hazardous materials spills. The federal law, triggered by a chemical plant catastrophe in Bhopal, India, in 1984 that killed nearly 4,000 people, also requires annual reviews of the law and public notification of its availability.

Some agencies clearly understood the law and its intent. Forty-four percent released the full report. Some of those had posted the information online. Others provided the information on disc. And one official in Iowa said he was delighted to see a citizen seeking the report: "We need more awareness on what to do during an incident for the safety of everyone."

Officials around the country who denied requests frequently cited national security or terrorism concerns, despite the fact that the 1986 law provides for withholding sensitive information in what's called a Tier II report.

Dan Roe, executive director of the Arizona State Emergency Response Commission, said local jurisdictions are caught "between a rock and a hard spot" when it comes to releasing public documents.

The EPA, which administers the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, hasn't updated procedures to keep up with post-9/11 security requirements demanded by the Department of Homeland Security.

"Local committees, within the realm of how they do business, have tried to deal with the two different worlds," Roe said.

Officials in some states ran background checks on citizen auditors or sent police to follow them. The highway patrol in one state even launched an 88-county alert seeking more information about one requester.

Overall, it took officials in Pima County about a month to provide the information.

David Lenox, coordinator for the Pima County Office of Emergency Management, told Erica Meltzer, an Arizona Daily Star reporter, that she might not get the information she requested.

"When I asked why not, he said that even though I didn't fit the profile, I might be a terrorist," Meltzer wrote in her report.

Mike Evans, emergency services coordinator in Cochise County, willingly handed over a copy of the Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan.

Evans said he had an old version of the plan in the back of his car, Brady McCombs, a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star, wrote in his audit report. "He said he didn't know where other copies were, but said he could give me his copy to copy."

An extra copy was eventually found in the office.

"(Evans) said a new version was being done, but hadn't been finalized … and wouldn't release it," McCombs wrote.

Officials at the Camp Verde office that is required to have a copy of the Emergency Response Plan told Rita Livingston, a volunteer auditor, that they didn't have a copy.

In Maricopa County, residents wanting to review hazardous material release and inventory reports would be required to present a driver's license for the office to copy and explain why they want the documents, county emergency officials said.

Warren Leek, director of the Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management, said that if people wanted access to information on facilities outside the vicinity of their home or workplace, or behaved in a manner that raised the staff's suspicions, the staff would not release the document immediately.

"If there's something that kind of raised our hackles and made us concerned that they might be a potential threat … we would delay giving them the information and would probably go to authorities who could do some background checking," Leek said. "As far as being able to hold the information completely, the law just really doesn't give us that option."

There are no guidelines in county, state or federal law explaining who counts as a "suspicious" person.

"It's pretty common sense," said Cristina Herrera, Maricopa County emergency-services planner. "You can tell if it's going to be kind of a shady character. You have to use your judgment in that decision-making process."

Maricopa County's policy is not legal.

If a public record is available to one person, it's legally available to everyone, said David Bodney, a First Amendment attorney who represents the Republic.

"(The county's) approach invites a discriminatory, uneven practice of sharing public records with members of the public," Bodney said.

County officials could, however, get the requesting person's name and then alert law-enforcement officials once the document was released, he said.

County officials have never had to actually put this unwritten policy into place. As far as records show, only one person requested such information in the last 2 1/2 years and the request was fulfilled, Leek said.

Roe said he doesn't agree with all the jurisdictions' approaches to releasing the public documents, such as making copies of drivers' licenses.

To unify procedures across the state, the commission has proposed new rules spelling out the circumstances under which officials could withhold information. The first draft of those rules is up for public review now, and includes a provision in which officials could withhold information if disclosure could harm public health or safety.