Why Have an FOIA Policy When You Don't Even Follow It?

[Eve Alone]

I made a FOIA request recently in which I went down to the City Hall to inspect the W-2 Forms of all city employees in 2008, finding a few interesting things in the process.  I sent the following request last Tuesday in an effort to get to the bottom of how the City Council's salary went from $50 per year in the 1990's to its current rate of $3600, yes that is a 72-fold increase.

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Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 3:20 PM
To: John Shay
Subject: FOIA Request

When the current charter was adopted on August 4, 1992 the City Clerk at that time noted in section 17.10: "The Mayor shall continue to receive an annual salary in the amount of Three Hundred Dollars ($300), and each Council Member shall continue to receive an annual salary of Fifty Dollars ($50), until such amounts are changed by the Council in accordance with the provisions of this Charter." Those provisions noted that this shall be done by ordinance and shall not be increased during their terms of office.

Under provisions of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (MCLA 15.231 et seq; MSA 4.1801 (1) et seq) I am requesting, preferably in electronic records sent to this E-Mail address, public records detailing all ordinances passed since that time (August 4, 1992- present) wherein the mayor's or city council's salaries were raised, and the minutes from the meeting wherein it was passed.

If you determine that some of the requested information is exempt from disclosure, please detail what is being withheld and cite the exemption under FOIA.

If fees to comply with this request exceed $20, please contact me at this E-Mail address with those fees enumerated.

As provided under FOIA, I would anticipate my request being filled within five working days of receipt of this letter.

 

I received this reply early this Monday:

 

From: John Shay <[e-mail]>
Cc: Richard Wilson <[e-mail]>
Sent: Mon, January 17, 2011 8:24:39 AM
Subject: RE: FOIA Request

Dear Ms.  

I have attached the City of Ludington ’s response to your FOIA request.  The itemization of the $114.51 fee is as follows: 

It took City Clerk Deborah Luskin 3 hours to search through all of the public records since 1992 to locate the public records you requested.  At $38.17 per hour (wages and benefits combined), this amounts to $114.51. 

Upon receipt of your payment in full, the City will release the records that you have requested. 

John Shay

City Manager

City of Ludington

The attached response said the request was granted, and to remit $114.51 to cover costs; it also said it was denied, requested records exempt from disclosure because a public record does not exist under the name given or by another reasonably known by the FOIA Coordinator.  Is he saying no such ordinance(s) were discovered?  Review by me and XLFD noted other disturbing things.  I replied Monday afternoon and gave some of our newspaper friends a copy:  

 

	John Shay <[e-mail]>; Richard Wilson <[e-mail]>
	k holman <[e-mail]>; tom rotta [e-mail]; [e-mail] FOIA%2520Policy-Revised%25202010%5B1%5D.pdf

I am confused.  I have attached a copy of the City's amended FOIA policy sent to me on December 22, 2011.  Section 5c of that policy says that a 'good faith deposit' is required for requests that the FOIA Coordinator determines to be over $50 that is to be no more than one-half of the total fee determined.  You can only request that the amount be paid in full if I failed to pay that deposit once requested.  You demand payment in full immediately.

 

You have also claimed a partial denial of this request, yet you have not included in your reply an explanation of the partial denial or a brief description of public records not provided, etc. as the new policy demands that you provide (section 7 a-e). 

 

You have also claimed I owe this money because it would take the City Clerk, Ms. Luskin, three hours to compile my request.  For this type of request, I find it difficult to believe that Ms. Luskin is the lowest paid employee/clerk capable of retrieving such material, although this again is what you are required to charge me for under the current FOIA policy, section 5b. 

 

The three hours seems also like a lot of time for a professional of Ms. Luskin's caliber, since a quick review of the city ordinances (which I would presume are on computer files) should turn the applicable ordinances quickly with a 'search' of key words.  And then just sending the associated  minutes through e-mail.

 

I have told you in the past that I qualify to be indigent and can provide an affidavit for that fact.  I am just a private citizen of this town who wonders, along with a growing amount of others, how the salary for City Councilors climbed from $50 per year a few years ago, to the current level of $3600, a 7200 percent increase.  The fact that you wish to charge me over $100 for this information speaks volumes.

 

Please clarify your positions on my above confusions, and consider this an appeal of your decision if you cannot.  Attorney Wilson, I request this to be brought before the Ludington Board of Ethics for the above misuse of the FOIA Policy by the City Manager.

 

 

 

[XLFD]

Disarm:  Actually, 3 hours to search through all the records since 1992 might be a blessing.  And of course, a lower paid employee might have taken twice as long .. and thus not saved any money overall.

Perhaps a more specific request might have greatly minimize the costs .. such as

" please provide a copy of the March 1992, April 1994, June 1998, January 2004, and December 2010 meeting minutes, and also ordinance #'s 512-22 and 232-11 detailing pay raises". 

Moreover .. There are many of the council minutes that are available to the general public online, and it seems to me that a person might try to minimize their out-of-pocket costs by doing some of the research on their own. 

Seems to me that if the city officials are breaking federal law, one of you could retain an attorney who would pursue legal remedies. 

I agree with RJE that $3600 a year is low.  So what really is the beef?

 

The availability to the resources you have, Disarm, are not available to the rest of us who do not work for the city in your capacity.  I cannot even verify what you point out (mostly) because all sources I and the rest of the public look at don't have those ordinances. 

But how can you say there was a pay raise in December 2010?  I have cursorily scanned both meeting minutes and have seen no ordinance even indirectly raising the city council's salary.  The first meeting even stated the city had continued the wage freeze for all city employees.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

The minutes are indeed readable. But those minutes do not include the actual documents being requested. Nor do they include many specifics of materials discussed or reported on. For those is why the need for the FIOA requests as city cousil tends to be quite arrogant when you question them directly or indirectly (as in the press or forums) this is why LT seems to function no longer.

The city does not like their laundry to be read on the line. Although if I were on the up and up, I sure wouldn't mind. I mean after all if the info being requested would make the requester look stupid that would be the end of the controversy would it not?

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

Dis you can call it baseless all you want. The facts are this. The LT forum did not stop discussions or personal attacks for the reason you sited.. it really was not worth there time to (baby sit) children personal issues with each other.

We can however debate useful newspaper functions here a little. I would think it is a local news-rags job to challenge and  actually report on local politics( IE city Hall) Only when a couple of serious discussions covering possible abuse or waste in the city government did the LT forum get shut down quicker than ( pick your favorite slip fall cliché). The fact they did not even give their readers a real explanation of the shut down, makes it real easy to be flippant with my logic for the demise.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

Your statement called my assumptions baseless. I then pointed out a logical basis for the assumption. Rather than discredit a valid opinion with a logical set of facts. You may just leave it as something like" I would rather believe in coincidence or cosmic karma". As I also had mentioned before your your post even that I am sure they did get tired of babysitting the posters. But they did not chose to kill the site, until some very specific hard news type posts occurred.

It kind of makes me wonder if a picture is worth a thousand words what happens if Jpegs of the facts being discussed suddenly show up on the nice picture forum. My bet it the whole site is suddenly taken down again and quiker than pick your favorite Cliché.

 

 

 

[XLFD]

And heaven knows I don't need anybody else's help in making me look stupid. 

Still, an Ordinance needs to be introduced, debated, and voted on by the council in an open meeting, so any raise in salary must be part of these minutes.  The salaries since at least 2008 have been the same.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

The minutes are available on the city web site XL. I would volunteer to look through them for at least a agenda post as to the salary discussion... But I have to be that happened in a closed session or someone would have volunteered this info already?

XL If you need someone just to read through the back ground to narrow the scope of your investigations I have a little time before by classes start again. Let me know specifically things you think may be in the minutes??? Do you have the link for the minutes?? if not I can shoot them to you.

[XLFD]

Guido,

Unless you can find minutes of the CC before 2008, I am afraid you cannot help me, as I've went through 2008-2010 pretty thoroughly. 

The city probably passes about 50 ordinances a year, maybe I will just ask to inspect the City Clerk's Book of Ordinances and scan all those into the record.  If I get those, I'll gladly accept your extra eyes, Guido.   Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.  Time for another FOIA request...

[XLFD]

Disarm replied:It is pointless to even try discussing anything with you .. because you continue to be delusional to the fact that I do NOT work for the city. 

Furthermore, the months, years, and ordinance numbers are fictional.  I used them only to show the type of information that you might need to be more successful in your FOIA requests. 

I gotta tell you, ...if it were me requesting that information .. I would go down there in person and ask to see all meeting minutes for each year starting with year 1992.  When I got done looking at 1992, .. I would then ask for 1993 .. and so on and so on.  I would take notes .. and also request copies of the specific minutes that contained the data I was looking for.  And that would only be a starting point. 

Again, are not some of these meeting minutes already available to the public online?

 

Disarm, thanks for wasting my time by posting false dates and ordinances.  If we knew the ordinances and the dates or had access to such stuff on-line, we would not have to fish for such information.  I would love to be able to go down to City Hall and spend the day scanning information (that should be up on their own web site) to my hearts content, but they won't allow me to do this.  On my first FOIA, City Manager Shay told me it would cost $900 to inspect the city's annual Building Permit Summaries, because I needed to have the Building Inspector conduct a weeks worth of work to get me the data and babysit the records while I looked at them.  He didn't tell me what the $900 was for until I had contacted him the third time.  It hasn't got much better.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

Can you now see where at least the impression of impropriety.. or at least non-transparency may exist ?

The longer the city stuff arms simple requests by hiding behind the cost of what should be a simple hit enter on a keyboard situation, the more it looks as if something I didn't think before, to be a big deal begins to look like one.

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

BTW:  The newspaper has absolutely NO responsibility towards investigating the city government.  They can if they want to .. but they are not obligated to.

 

If you ask me ( and I know you didn't ) that is the function of a News source either print or radio or Television. Gee and you also are noticing the declining readership of those agencies. Could it be it is not those of us who belief they are obligated to do the thing you say they are not?

Why would I read a paper who just mindlessly spews the facts as someone else wants me to hear them? I can just go read the minutes of city hall online as the paper can. Why do I need them to regurgitate that infomation to me?

The reason the Constitution of the United States demanded a free and open press was so the powers that be can not get away with just publishing their own version of the truth. Our modern agenda driven press is losing because it does not understand that obligation.

In short readership and viewership of News media is not down due to not being what the people want to hear. Otherwise how would you explain the reason some hard news organizations are up by more than the mainstream media is down each year? Could it be they actually report facts I can not get by wading through the White house fluff site with no sources to site there assumptions?

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

One of the first things all dictators have to take over is the free press. It doesn't take a great deal of vision to see it is already happening here in the U.S.A.

[XLFD]

We can agree on that whole-heartedly, Disarm.  The local newspaper has took a side on who to serve in its capacity, and it's not the people that buy their paper.  Unless those people are on the City of Ludington payroll.