Power Point Presentation: Summary of FOIA Requests (As Presented by XLFD)

[XLFD]

John Shay was all set to give this Power Point Presentation (PPP) at the last City Council meeting, but the decision was made not to do it, even though it was part of the agenda.  As it was a PPP on FOIA requests, it was only natural that Eve or I should make one to check out what John Shay does in his spare time at the City Hall.  Since Johnny wouldn't give me any notes to go with this, and wouldn't deliver it for me, I have decided to deliver it from my (Power) Point of View.  Heaven help us all.

But first let's look at the FOIA request on this.  PPPs are generated on the computer, to be delivered via a computer, and we asked for the computer records to be inspected or sent electronically.  Didn't happen; he made copies of the computer files and charged a mother of three on food stamps for 23 photocopies at $.25 a pop, regardless of the fact she has an Affidavit of Indigency on file which gets her the first $20 discounted when honored as it always has been in the past. 

Not only that, some records were withheld due to Shay claiming the Attorney-Client privilege.  So Shay conferred with a City Attorney in doing a PPP on my FOIA Requests, and now wishes to claim those communications can be shielded by this privilege?   That will be hard to prove if this reaches the local Circuit Court.  But here's my presentation (clears throat):

 

Slide 1:  Receipt and post-it

 

"This shows that $5.75 was collected for an FOIA request, no itemization.  This is usual, the City charged me $57 for the 24 pages of the Water Tower painting contract, and charged me for "copies".  Other cities will itemize your fees for a request, they don't bother doing that here.  Perhaps because the fees don't match the charge. 

The post-it is John Shay's way of saying, we don't trust these guys to come through with the money if we give them the info first.  Unfortunately, we ascribe to an honor system so that when we say we will come in and pay the amount of money requested for the records, even if it's a totally unlawful fee, we pay.  Operating within the law comes naturally to us."

 

Slide 2:  Title Page

 

"I guess one should be puzzled about why a City Manager who gets paid over $60 an hour (when we consider benefits) would take the time to make a PPP summarizing the FOIA requests from a pair of local watchbloggers who use the material to keep the people informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process.  Nobody from the Ludington City Hall has bothered to refute some of the serious allegations that have came from some of these records, showing cronyism, unfair bidding practices, and unexcusable ethical/legal lapses by public officials. 

I guess one should be puzzled about why we take all this grief from City Hallers, if you are sympathetic to the other side.  We want good government, justice, and despise evil in all its manifestations would be part of our response.  We are flattered that John would use City resources to create such a summary, maybe he is touting our civil involvement with it."

 

Slide 3:  Stat page

 

"Cancel that last statement.  The 88 number surprised me a little, until I found out that many of them were duplicate requests, appeals and clarifications.   The frequency has increased as the election I am in draws nearer.  I am doing research on the City Council, and have a large amount of questions in reading meetings and policies.  I then talk these over with Eve, we formulate the request and she sends them out in intervals so that Shay does not combine them into one. 

He obviously took even more precious time to calculate frequencies and compare them, and I can't even figure how he got that the records I requested were over a foot high.  If one considers how he mangled my very first request, he could probably have got a foot of records from that. 

As for his last statement, making this PPP and dodging requests almost 88 times have cost more to our City than the actual compliance with the FOIAs that have been accomplished."

 

Slide 4:  Plausible deniability?

 

"You will see that he has denied parts of requests quite often in the summary, and while he has done it mostly because the "record didn't exist", he never ever specifies what parts of the record is not available.  That defies Hartzell v Mayville Community School District, 183 Mich App 782; 455 NW2d 411 (1990)  The FOIA requires disclosure of the fact that a requested document does not exist. A plaintiff in a FOIA action that is forced to file a lawsuit to ascertain that a document does not exist is a prevailing party entitled to an award of costs and reasonable attorney fees. 

His last statement is pure slander.  We have never failed to pay charges to compile and copy requested records that we have received.   We have refused to go through with replies that were found to be much higher than what was expected, but when you put "if fees to process this FOIA will cost more than $20, please contact us before proceeding." into the request, he should not even proceed until he notifies us, and not make such a loaded statement into his summary."

 

Slide 5:  Total Costs

 

"Let's just say that the first $1600 of that cost he measures into the equation is for my first request and its amendment, which were never fulfilled, requiring no lost time to the City except from a City Manager at his keyboard.  Most of the rest is "Request Inflation" such as having the City Clerk spend 3.5 hours tracing what the $40,000 set aside for water safety in this years budget was used for.  A minority of these requests do take a nominal amount of time to compile, but hundreds of hours of staff time, attorney fees, and indeterminate costs?  Oh, please."

 

Slide 6:  Timeline p1

 

"Aah, my original requests, I remember them like they were yesterday.  I sent a FOIA request to the BI Dave Bader for the electronic records of the building permits issued since 1985, figuring he would be able to send a computer record of that information with no sweat.  I got back this from John Shay  First reply.  No explanation was given as to the nature of the $899 he was charging.  I sent this reply FOIA rewrite  wondering about the costs and wondering why there wasn't some sort of comprehensive computer database for such information.  I mean we had a full-time, well-paid building inspector during all that time.  Here's that rationale  Fees p.1 and Fees p.2.  

Request #3 is misleading, as presented in this summary, here is my request found within the FOIAC's reply. 

You will notice that in his first few replies, he had neglected to apprise me of my options for appeal, an adequate description of costs, or other things the law requires.  To this day, I still can't imagine that the City of Ludington does not have a database for all the building permits issued during these years or have the yearly summaries (that are presented to the CC in January of each year) more easy to find.  Can you imagine it taking a $50,000 a year BI taking over a week to look just for yearly summaries?  I can imagine the permits for 25 years might be a foot thick themselves on paper-- and yet a computer file with that same info could fit in an E-mail attachment."

 

Slide 7-24:  # 7  # 8  # 9  # 10  # 11  # 12  # 13  # 14  # 15  # 16  # 17  # 18  # 19  # 20  # 21  # 22  # 23  # 24

 

I could go on and on about abuses of the system by John Shay in providing/assessing many of these, but I will condense it somewhat, and let you review the requests yourselves and feel free to ask me what the request was made in relation to.  They all had some purpose, and that purpose was to either get information that I needed to research a topic, or to supplement the existing record and see whether there was either exculpatory-- or damning-- material therein.

 

Thirty-one of these 88 were duplicates of original requests. 

In # 44 (slide #14), Mr. Shay says I reneged on a  charge of $1.64.  I resent that because I paid for that request, which was $1.04, as seen in this E-mail exchange.  I paid that ($1.04) in person at the City Hall as I said I would, but surprise, the Shay probably noted the wrong number in his notes and had me owing $.60 and has likely been calling me a reneger ever since. Sixty cents is about a half a minute of the CM's time, FYI.

Same slide, #14 and #15, says that The Ludington Torch is not a valid requester, which is why he never replied.  The FOI Act defines:  “Person” means an individual, corporation, limited liability company, partnership, firm, organization, association, governmental entity, or other legal entity.  The Torch falls within those, and requires a response.

In many places, it says that I or Toni never paid the fee.  These all refer to when we did not agree with the process or the fees he charged, not that he compiled the info, gave it to us, and we didn't come across with the dough.  Slide 1 should show that he would not do this anyway.

In request # 70, slide # 20, he says that Toni refused to inspect the document that she requested.  She did not ever ask to inspect the blueprints of the project, just the records from the City to the Contractors for the Staffon St. project that dealt with its considerations of the new Complete Streets concepts from the City's Resolution.  The City had no such considerations, but he wanted to show her the blueprints, and was repeatedly told that was not the request.

Finally for my presentation, note that request #83, slide 23, he referred me to the requests of #21, 32, 43 and 52.  I have noted in a prior thread that this was significantly different from those requests, and that for those other requests I was asked a wide variety in fees:  for  $228.90, $183.68, $1.04 (paid), and $2.75 (paid), respectively.  I would pay either of the last two amounts for the data, but he has never quoted any price.  And as of today, it has been over ten days since the City Council had my appeal (ironically, at the very meeting this PPP was introduced-- nearly. 

 

Next week, I will file in Circuit Court to get the public records of Nick Tykoski and his businesses with the City of Ludington and I envision a quick victory as he has always failed to quote me a price, while not providing the records.  Back to you, John; great presentation."

[Marty Redman]

Mr. John Shay is trying to show how many and how outrageous your FOI requests are, but all I see is how outrageous and how petty his replies are.  Good luck on your court case and your continued quest for knowledge despite this Shay-meful person.  It sounds like a slam dunk unless your courthouse  is as corrupt as its made out to be, and alined with Ludington CH.  On the other hand, don't take it for granted.

[XLFD]

I think our Circuit Court Judge Cooper is a fair man, but if my previous experience with this courthouse is any indication, they will use the power of concurrent jurisdiction to give me my favorite judge, who has shown a propensity to ignore statutes and behave imperiously when rendering decisions.  Caw, caw.

[Sweater Cows!]

Gandhi  “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

[Willy]

The Council was wrong to declare that Shay's dealings with the City Attorney come under the "client /  attorney" privilage blanket. The Council either received bad advice or they are just plain ignorant of the law. Whenever a City official consults with the CIty attorney about City business it is not privilaged information. If it were then all an  official would have to do is have the attorney present during City business and everything would be considered as privilaged information. This Council, Mayor and Manager need an education in dealing with the law. Better yet it would much better if they were replaced.