In the search for Instigator Zero, expect papers to be shredded.

Irrespective of the Floyd County Health Department board's decision on NABC's appeal, as presumably reached Thursday evening, and expected to be revealed early in the coming week, there are outstanding issues still to be played out.

And rest assured, I like to play.

One is the cavalier attitude of Dr. Harris and counsel toward the department's obvious foot dragging in the matter of our public access request. Not only did insultingly minimal compliance (a grand total of six records produced in a period beginning 9/22/12) come at the last possible moment prior to the hearing, but it was accompanied by Dr. Harris's sneering suggestion that I hadn't phrased the request correctly.

Interesting, isn't it?

If the request wasn't written adequately, why was it sufficient grounds for the public access office in Indianapolis first to reply to me in depth, and later to approve and expedite our formal complaint against the health department for its delay in complying with the request?

Perhaps Dr. Harris answers only to one or the other God, and not the public access arm of Indiana government.

Another is the question of exactly when and why the health department connived its decision to usurp decades of Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission precedent and to declare expansionist activism by asserting regulatory control of alcoholic beverages. In its minimalist, condescending response to our public access request, the health department conceded in effect that its interest in temporary food server permits in the context of draft beer at ATC-sanctioned events began around the time of June 14, 2013.

From the start, we've countered: Why this, why now, and why NABC?

The department's obtuse and Orwellian reply has been to pretend that it's been this way all along, but seeing as its own records illustrate otherwise, aren't we obliged to pursue the next logical step of tracing the statutorily indefensible move to its actual source? Isn't that what any epidemiologist worth his or her advanced degree would seek to learn?

It isn't about smoking bans, but smoking guns.

Consequently, I'm thinking that a fresh, new public access request needs to be filed, this time asking for all health department meeting minutes for the last five or so years. These might read depressingly like The Lancet ... and they also might be highly instructive, don't you think?