UPDATE; RESPONSE FROM CITY ATTORNEY
Mayor and Council:
As
Mr. Smith emailed all of you to discuss his concerns with the City’s
response to a public records request, I wanted to make sure you’re
hearing why we have not yet produced the contract. Mr. Smith requested a
copy of the contract between the City and the Omega Group. The
contract would normally be a public record – however the issue is with
information in the contract that the Omega Group has designated as
proprietary. Under N.C.G.S. 132-1.2, the City is not required to
release information that is a trade secret. We are in touch with the
Omega Group to work on whether or not any of the information is actually
protected under North Carolina law. If it is not, we will produce the
full contract. If it is, then we will make the appropriate redactions
and produce the redacted contract.
If you have any questions about this issue, please contact me at your convenience.
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UPDATE; MY REPLY (to the same list)
Folks,
Although I was the one who asked about this public records request, Mr. Shah-Kahn did not include me among those to whom he sent this response -- an innocent oversight, I'm sure.
I am respectfully requesting to immediately receive a copy of the documents I requested with the portion(s) the City Attorney asserts are questionably public redacted while he consults with the Omega Group on North Carolina law.
If the City Attorney intends not to provide me with a redacted copy by tomorrow morning, I ask that he inform us of his refusal and to please include me on the recipient list this time.
Sincerely,
Roch Smith, Jr.
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GREENSBORO, NC -- On April 2, 2013, I asked for a copy of the $88,000 contract between the City of Greensboro and the Omega Group for their crime mapping services. The contract was in the hands of the Greensboro Police Department who sent it to the City Legal department on the day of my request, where it has sat since. Why?
The City says they want to get the vendor's permission before releasing the contract. I have asked them by what state law a vendor contract may be denied to the public without the vendor's permission and copied the question to Mayor Robbie Perkins and all city council representatives.
I've heard back from councilor Nancy Vaughan who said she talked to an attorney who said the contract is public record and should be released. I've not heard from any other council people or from city staff with an answer to my question.
Can you imagine the implications for fiduciary oversight if the City of Greensboro now starts claiming vendor contracts are off limits to public scrutiny? Can you imagine the implications for a properly functioning government if city councilors continue to show such a lackadaisical attitude towards the morass that has become the city's handling of public records? Councils' unconcern is troubling, their inaction is bordering on irresponsible.
"Process will not become an excuse for delay. I cannot emphasize that enough."
-- Denise Turner Roth, City Manager, City of Greensboro
In the absence of criminalization of willful and intentional violation of public-records law, could we at least get a permanent injunction in place so that city officials can be jailed for contempt? I think "Ms. Turner-Roth, if I have to see you here again, you'd better have brought a toothbrush" would be a fine judicial motivation for our bureaucrats.
ReplyDeleteThey suck. They are horrible. They are not transparent and are not trying to build trust. What they want is for us to shut up and go away so they can be comfortable during their time on the clock. They really suck. I cannot emphasize that enough.
ReplyDeleteThey are learning from the non profit's book of doing business. Glad you are paying attention.
ReplyDeleteKeep fighting the good fight. November can't come soon enough.
ReplyDelete--Brandon Burgess
I believe some are in a pretty big panic mode as more follow the money.
ReplyDeleteI hear the GPAC taskforce is having problems showing the city where it spent all the money received from city council.
George, are they even attempting to?
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's public protest time, hit the streets with banners, signs the whole nine yards...
ReplyDeleteAnd make sure lots of video is posted to youtube.
You see, so far our problem has been that all of us are preaching to the choirs. It's time we found a new and bigger audience.
Don't shoot the messenger. I'm seriously just asking a question.
ReplyDeleteWhat are your thoughts on the extra $64,000 of taxpayer's dollars that it's taking to get the city caught up on the backlog of records requests?
You might remember Hammer telling me to do a records request on that amount. I did. Approximately $64,000.
You might say- the $64,000 questions. If you're old enough to remember that show.
Glad to hear you got a response so quickly, I'm still waiting for records I request from July of last year.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think that $64,000 is getting the City "caught up" on records requests? Is it? Things seem as bad as ever. Are you seeing evidence that they are getting caught up or are they causing more delay?
What do you think about the City spending $64,000 and still not being able to get Amanda Lehmert or Ben Holder a single email out of 11,000 in over two months?
Sounds like money misspent, if you ask me -- and you did.
Tony, as I responded via e-mail:
ReplyDelete"It's like I told Denice and city staff, the more information made easily available the lower the cost to the City. I realize that documents from 1879 are hard to put online but every document generated today was put in an online database-- we just don't have access to it. But hackers and cyber terrorists have that kind of access and probably get around the city data base better than the city's on IT department."