Opinion ID: 2632238
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Decision Management, Inc. memoranda

Text: The Office of the Governor withheld an eleven-page February 4, 1997, memorandum to John Katz from DMI regarding Congressional passage of ANWR bill. It also withheld two five-page February 26, 1997, memoranda from DMI to Katz regarding the same subject. Gwich'in first argues that nothing in the administrative record establishes that the DMI memoranda were directly solicited. To qualify for the privilege, the communication or document at issue must be an internal communication or one directly solicited  by a government official. [42] Outside consultants' reports have been held to be privileged if the agency uses them in its decisionmaking process. [43] After reviewing the February 4, 1997, memorandum, we conclude that the document establishes that it was directly solicited. The Office of the Governor clearly invited DMI to submit a proposal and DMI responded. The February 26, 1997, memoranda were merely addenda to that proposal and therefore were also directly solicited. Second, Gwich'in argues that the three DMI memoranda are not predecisional because no specific decision was identified; the memoranda were incorporated by reference in a document disclosed by the state, a contract between Arctic Power and DMI; and the memoranda relate to an agreement beyond the decisionmaking capacity of the executive, namely a contract between two private parties. No specific decision needs to be identified for a document to be predecisional. [44] The privilege protects the give-and-take deliberative process, not final decisions; no ultimate conclusion needs to be identified, or even reached, for the privilege to attach. Documents that are incorporated by reference or expressly adopted in a final decision by an agency may lose their predecisional status. [45] Here the DMI memoranda were incorporated by reference into DMI's private contract with Arctic Power. Incorporating an otherwise privileged document into a private contract cannot be a basis for the loss of that privilege because that contract is not the agency's final decision. [46] We conclude that the DMI memoranda are both predecisional and deliberative. As Gwich'in notes, the decision about whether Arctic Power would contract with DMI was beyond that office's authority, but we conclude that DMI submitted the memoranda in February 1997 as proposals suggesting a strategy for public information and lobbying campaigns to be overseen by Arctic Power. Although DMI ultimately contracted with Arctic Power, the DMI memoranda are inextricably intertwined with the proposed lobbying plans of the Office of the Governor; those plans may have included using Arctic Power to lobby for it. [47] The privilege therefore serves to protect the very process at issue herethe deliberative consideration of proposals which were not adopted.