Let me understand this one, the county hired an outside firm to do the county’s responsibilities in an election process and then the outside company said they have no legal responsibility to release information? But the company was not legally allowed to have that information!
Basically, they gave the private company the AUTHORITY to do county business, but the private company says they do not have the RESPONSIBILITY to follow the law concerning county business, because they are a private business.
WRONG! When doing government work, you fall under the requirements of that government entity - PERIOD! No matter what, the mandated responsibilities always remain, regardless of who is actually doing the work.
If it was this simple to avoid public record requirements, every single government entity would outsource every single function of their responsibility to a third party, private-company. Heck, the only people actually working for the government entity would be those who sign contracts with private companies! LOL!