Why the mystery?

GREENSBORO, NC -- On the mysterious genesis of state legislator Trudy Wade's idea to monkey around with the make up of Greensboro's city council, News & Record reporter Amanda Lehmert writes:

"Council members, former elected leaders and political wonks have been left to speculate which one of them poked the bear."

Add to the list of those left to speculate News & Record readers — which is not where a news organization should want to leave its audience.

A few days ago, Lehmert reported:

"Wade said she was prompted to consider the issue by local business owners, who she said asked not to be identified."

That's fine and dandy, but a reporter should not acquiesce to a preference for such secrecy; in fact, a reporter should challenge it vociferously. Who are the people pushing these proposed changes to city government and what are their motives? If only we had some kind of person whose job it was to challenge authority, to investigate and uncover information for the public benefit.

Communications with Wade on this matter would be public record. They would likely end the "speculation" and fill the gaping hole in this story. A professional reporter covering this should not hesitate to ask for them.

Paper tigers

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record's digital editor on the refusal of the Greensboro Police Department to make public video footage captured by officer worn body cameras:

"We'll continue to make the requests, and to fight for the information any way we can." 

Two points:

First, I have repeatedly asked the City of Greensboro for copies of the News & Record's requests for these videos and the city's denials. There are none. The News & Record makes these requests verbally and the city, therefor replies verbally. This matters because, without a documented record, it is harder for those of us interested in affecting public policy on this matter to participate. Policy makers, the ACLU or other interested groups or individuals do not have at their disposal a record of the requests and denials they could use to document the circumstances and nature of the City's refusals. The News & Record, ironically, is not contributing to the public record of the City's actions.

Second, it is simply untrue that the News & Record is continuing to "fight for the information any way we can." That sounds good and we might wish it were so, but it's empty rhetoric. The most forceful and definitive means by which the N&R could "fight" for this information would be to sue for it. Under North Carolina law, people or entities denied access to what they believe are public records can take it to court. The News & Record has not done that. They should if they think these videos are public record, but they haven't; so they are clearly not fighting for the videos any way they can. They are, quite contrary to their claims, confining their efforts to the mildest and least effective means: begging and pleading.

Not for the police to decide; city council needs to act

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record is right about video footage captured by the cameras now worn by all Greensboro police officers and for which police policy dictates that every interaction with a citizen is to be recorded: They are the people's property, not the police's.

First, to state the obvious: Based on what police are willing to tell us so far (which isn’t much), the Aug. 4 arrests of two Greensboro men seems petty and excessive.

Less than a block from his home, Rufus Scales, 27, was pinned to the ground and handcuffed for resisting arrest, walking in the middle of a street and “impeding traffic” where there seemed to be none.

Scales’ brother Devin, 22, captured a portion of the incident on camcorder footage that has been posted on the Internet. He pans the camera to show streets with no sidewalks or traffic, then two more police cars arriving.

The camera shakes as a hand suddenly appears in front of the lens and the filming suddenly stops. The officer, T.B. Cole, appears to confirm while on camera why he is arresting Scales: “You cannot just sit there and run your mouth and start cursing in the middle of the street.”

The incident has been seized by police critics as evidence of the mistreatment of some citizens, especially African Americans. It also adds another arrow to the quiver of the mounting argument against the Greensboro Police Department’s insistence on keeping footage shot by officers’ cameras shielded from public view as “a personnel record.”

In a meeting last week with News & Record editors and reporters, Police Chief Ken Miller, interim Chief Anita Holder and the interim city attorney, Tom Carruthers, stood by that interpretation, arguing that to do otherwise would be to break state law. But the footage’s value as a public record should hold greater weight. After all, these are taxpayer-funded recordings of officers’ interaction with the public in public places. Also, we’re talking about a tool that was advertised as a chance to build community trust in police and improve accountability. The city accomplishes neither by keeping such a stubborn grip on the footage, and may, in fact, erode trust in the process.

During the Scales arrests, Cole, a training officer, was not wearing a body camera that is now standard issue for patrol officers. The officers who later arrived on the scene were, but their footage won’t be released to the public or media, either.

State law does allow the city to release such video if city leaders believe doing so is essential to maintaining public confidence in local government. Certainly, in the wake of national tensions following the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., this seems like such an instance.

Miller did say last week that Rufus and Devin Scales may see the available footage, but no one else. Meanwhile, to her credit, Mayor Nancy Vaughan has expressed concern that the city invokes the personnel-records defense too often. As for the rest of the council, it remains conspicuously silent.

It had nothing to say when an officer fatally shot a knife-wielding woman in March and refused to release that video. And it has said not one syllable so far in the case of the Scales brothers.

Miller insists, “We have nothing to hide in the Scales case.”

Then, by all means, let’s go to the tape.

Greensboro Police Department public records malarkey

UPDATE (June 13th): The GPD has released a version of the accident report.

UPDATE II (June 13th): In reviewing the history of this request with city staff, it appears as if some confusion was caused by the request for an accident report being translated into a request for an incident report along the way. City staff explain that the accident report was begun on June 8, completed on June 11, and made public after review and approval by a supervisor.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police (GPD) reported by press release of a collision between a pedestrian and a vehicle on Bryan Boulevard on Sunday, June 8th. As I wrote yesterday, the accident report was missing from the GPD's online database of accident reports so I requested it directly from the city.

Yesterday, I received a document specifically manufactured to respond to my request. It is not an accident report and was created an hour after yesterday's blog post wondering where the accident report is. Now we not only continue to wonder where the actual accident report is but we also need to know why it is being withheld and whose idea it was to fabricate a record in response to my request for it.

Here is a real accident report, from another accident on the same day as the Bryan Boulevard collision. You will notice it is three pages of great detail on a standard form (click to enlarge):

Here is the "report" the police created in response to my request for the Bryan Boulevard accident report (click to enlarge) :

Keep it stupid, simple: John Hammer misguided on city's public records policies

GREENSBORO, NC -- Rhino Times editor John Hammer drones on with a negative opinion of the city's efforts to improve transparency and its handling of public records requests. In his view, the city is over-complicating things and nefariously working to shield itself from the demands of state public records law. "It's a trick," he writes in his uninformed paranoia.

In his view, access to public information is all very simple: Whoever has public records should provide them when asked. Sure, in some ideal pre-computerized era where paper records resided in binders and file cabinets, that might have worked fine, but in a world where records reside mostly electronically across a multitude of physical and virtual repositories, that's not a comprehensive policy.

Hammer might have gained some insight into the challenges and opportunities of modern technology and pubic records had he gone to the City's meeting today about improving public records access as did Ben Holder, Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record, Jordan Green of Triad City Beat, City Council members Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Jamal Fox and Mike Barber, the City Manager, the City Attorney, the City's pubic relations director, the City's public records administrator and I.

Had Hammer attended, he might have learned how thinking bigger than his quaint notions has already resulted in greater access to public information and how the city is planing to make an even more responsive and transparent city government. (Not to mention being disabused of his mistaken notion that the City intends to start charging for copies of public records.)

Here are some things the city has implemented or is planning:

Staff education: It's fine for Hammer to say that staff should just "follow the law;" that does no good if staff doesn't know what the law is or what their obligations are. The city intends to implement formal procedures for educating city staff about public records law and the city's policies.

Providing reasons when records are denied: State law allows people who have had records requests denied to ask for the reason for the denial and the city is obligated to give a response. Under the City's updated policies, a reason would be given as a matter of course if records are denied, without the requester having to ask. This is one of those rare examples of the city raising its standards above the minimum the law demands.

Online request tracking and repository: The city has already undertaken laudable efforts to put more information online. The recent document dump of records related to the finances of the city-sponsored International Civil Rights Center and Museum and the now-searchable online access to City Council and committee agenda documents, video and minutes are two good examples. The city also plans to roll out this summer online access to the system that tracks records requests so that people can see just how well (or not) the city is responding to requests for public records.

This kind of proactive and modern transparency is a world away from Hammer's simplistic view of how people are to access public records.

Appeals process: Under state law, the only recourse one has if he feels records have been improperly withheld is to go to court (or whine and make a big stink). Hammer brags of having gone to court over public records. I have too. Hammer is right that it's not the ideal remedy. The city is considering coming up with some sort of dispute resolution process so that people, like Hammer, when denied public records have another course of action more accessible than the courts. It's the kind of proactive policy Hammer should cheer.

Better access to records of elected officials: Today's meeting covered several other aspects of public records that could greatly improve transparency including the possibility of having council members forward emails about city business from their private accounts to a city account where they could be better archived and searched; and considering how texts and emails sent and received during public meetings by elected officials and city staff can be made part of the record of the meeting.

While it's true that many (but not all) of these things are plans and promises, there is a very different posture towards transparency at city hall nowadays. Gone is the hostility towards transparency that flourished under former Mayor Robbie Perkins and the former city attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan. John Hammer would help this city out if he recognized the opportunities this new council and new city administration offer and proded them forward. It may not be like this forever and putting some policies and procedures in place now, in a friendly environment, would make it just a little harder for some future enemy of transparency to clamp down on public access. Hammer could help things along, if he thought about it a little more than he has so far.

It's a matter of transparency

GREENSBORO, NC -- An interesting interchange between Greensboro City Council representative Tony Wilkins and his colleagues at a recent city council work session was captured on video (below).

The City of Greensboro recently asked the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, to which the city is providing funding, to provide a list of all employee salaries. Similarly, Wilkins had asked for the top two salaries for all of the non-profits the city funds, not just the Civil Rights Museum.

Wilkins' request was denied by the city manager who told him Wilkins would have to get five votes first even though, as Wilkins points out in the video, the council did not vote to request the salary information from the Civil Rights Museum.

The video begins with Wilkins asking his colleagues for the votes to get the top two salaries of all city-funded non-profits. What follows is a disappointing display of resistance to Wilkins' request and sorry excuses for why the Civil Rights Museum is "different;" most adamantly, unfortunately, from Mayor Nancy Vaughan.

Wilkins responds:

"It blows my mind that a simple information request that every person in Greensboro should know is now being blocked by part of this council."

Representative (and congressional candidate) Zack Matheny counters:

"Tony, not everybody in this whole world wants to know or cares."

As the meeting is wrapping up and Wilkins is continuing, in measured tones, to press his point, Matheny says:

“I support you. Don’t shoot the guy that supports you. If you keep shooting me, I’ll change my vote.”

Council will vote on the matter at its next meeting.

Mama always said, unequal is as unequal does

From the comments at The Detonator on the International Civil Rights Center & Museum board chair Deena Hayes-Greene's assertion of unequal public scrutiny for city-funded entities:
-----------

She missed an opportunity for some goodwill and positive PR, still, her point remains. Why is the Civil Rights Center and Museum being treated differently? Sure, it’s transparent and proper for the [museum] records to be made publicly accessible, but:

- Why did it take the City nearly four months to respond to a public records request for the publicly-incentivized Wyndham hotel feasibility study?

- Why has the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, to this day, refused to provide to city council representative Marikay Abujuaiter a list of matching donors to the city’s $250,000 contribution to the performing arts center exploratory efforts? A record she has publicly asked for three times, starting in October of last year and which CFGG president Walker Sanders tells her, each time, is forthcoming, most recently two weeks ago when, at a city council meeting, he said publicly and on the record he would provide to Abuzuaiter “tomorrow” and which he did not do?

- Why is the mayor insisting that the non-profit governing the operations of the performing arts center will have its records made public because it will co-own the facility with the city yet is declining to obligate the non-profit to public transparency in the operating agreement or its by-laws?

- Why does city-supported Downtown Greensboro Incorporated get a pass when it declares some of its records to be off limits to public inspection?

Yes, there is a double standard. The solution is not to give the Civil Rights Museum the same cloak of secrecy that other publicly-funded third parties receive but to extend the same expectations for transparency and public access to all others.

Civil Rights Museum response a warning on performing arts center

GREENSBORO, NC -- Although she gets some of her facts and nomenclature grossly wrong, the director of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Deena Hayes-Greene, is right about the inequality of the current city council's expectations of the non-profits it funds and her reactions foreshadow problems with the city's expectations of the performing arts center.

In an answer to the city's request for more information about the museum's operations, Hayes-Greene writes this about the city making the museum's responses public:

"[A]ny time Sit-In Movement, Inc., a non-profit, but a private corporation*, answers in this format its personal confidential and financial information will be published on a City website. [snip] [W]e decline to have our private information published on the City web page unless other recipients of City Money [sic] do also."

The City of Greensboro is currently formulating a contract that will set the stage for governance of the performing arts center. It anticipates the formation of a non-profit corporation to operate the facility. For weeks I have been pleading with city council to include language that would obligate the non-profit to make its records public. Instead of enshrining that in the agreement, what was added was language that limits public access only to "audited financial statements" and "board meeting minutes" and even then those limited records, according to the current text, can be inspected only "to the extent the functioning of the non-profit is not compromised."

Council has been resistant to changing this language and actually obligating the performing arts center governing non-profit to public transparency, insisting that the city's co-ownership of the building will somehow magically compel the independent non-profit corporation to make its records public and that obligating the non-profit to public transparency in the contract is unnecessary. Seeing Hayes-Greene's objection to public transparency prompted me to write the following to city council.

----------

 Dear City Council,

I have previously expressed my concerns with you that the portion of the performing arts center agreement regarding public access to the governing non-profit's records is inadequate and an invitation to secrecy, obfuscation and mistrust. Lest you may have doubted the potential for an uncooperative future board to take an adversarial posture towards transparency under the current terms of the agreement, I invite you to see Deena Hayes-Greene's latest response to the City's inquiry regarding the finances and operations of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

I encourage you, again, to consider the implications of the performing arts center contract on situations just such as this and to enshrine in the agreement, in no uncertain terms, public access to the performing arts center's board's records. Not only will you be shirking your duties to protect the interests of Greensboro's public if you do not more strongly mandate public access to the performing arts center governing board's records in the agreement, but you will put truth to Ms. Hayes-Greene's assertions that the International Civil Rights Center and Museum is being treated differently than the performing arts center.

Cordially,

Roch Smith, Jr.

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The City of Greensboro is committed to providing $30 million in public financing to the performing arts center (compared to $1.5 million for the museum) and, by design, will be the financial backstop for operational shortfalls. It is simply irresponsible for the city not to obligate to public transparency the entity that will be governing an operation vested with so much public support. Simply saying that the governing non-profit probably will be transparent or that one could make the argument that their records should be public is not enough. It gives the board room to raise the kinds of objections raised by Ms. Hayes-Greene.

If this council actually expects the records of the performing arts center governing non-profit to be public, they should put that obligation in the contract. Anything less is a wink and a nod that this council is prepared to allow the governing board to operate with a degree of secrecy.

* This is exactly the same type of organization proposed to govern the performing arts center -- a non-profit LLC.

Update: Edited for clarity.

Letter to city council on performing arts center agreement

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro has released a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the terms by which the city and the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (CFGG) propose to proceed with the performing arts center (PAC).

Reading it prompted me to send this to City Council:
------------

 Hi Folks,

 Regarding the PAC MOU:

 1. How about memorializing some transparency? Specifically: agreeing that all records pertaining to the operation and governance of the facility, including those generated by the non-profit entity, shall be publicly available in conformity with North Carolina public records law.

 2. Where is it specified who will own the center? Although one of the final paragraphs refers to the possibility of what happens if the CIty no longer desires to own the PAC, nowhere do I see where it is specified that the city will own it to begin with.

 3. It seems a really bad idea that, if the city no longer wants to own the PAC, CFGG will assume ownership. That is ripe, in my opinion, for trouble. A future council could decide that they don't want the PAC and, instead of selling it to the benefit of taxpayers, they would have no option but to give it to CFGG. Shoot, they could decide not to own it just to make that happen.

 4. The donor's bank loan will be collateralize by the facility? Has anyone thought about the implications if they should default? How does that then work with a bank owning half the facility or eventually selling it to a private entity? Do the donors remain in the governing body if they default?

 5. It seems unwise to exempt certain board members from term limits.

Yours,

Roch

Dang right!

GREENSBORO, NC -- Blogger Dang (Eric Robert) recently joined the board of tax-payer funded Downtown Greensboro Incorporated (DGI). Although having only attended two meetings so far, he is bothered by the board's lack of transparency, tight-fisted rule and self-dealings. He has some excellent suggestions for improving public trust in DGI that should apply to all non-profits that receive public funding.

He suggests:

• Record board meetings electronically. 
• Respond to requests for information about the organization in accordance with public records law.
• Structure organizations so the operations are transparent and understood without multiple layers of foundations, shelters and holding companies.
• Don't use P.R. consultants as a means to avoid being honest and forthcoming.
• Diversify boards so that the members reflect the community at-large.

Some of these recommendations can only serve as guideposts at best. Only records of government business are subject to North Carolina public records law, for example, but that doesn't mean that non-profit boards receiving public largess cannot strive to be more open.

Also, when elected officials and public staff who sit on non-profit boards in their official capacities receive records from the non-profit, such as meeting minutes and audits, they should, as a matter of course, make those publicly available as the City of Greensboro refreshingly did last week, posting online minutes and audits from board meetings of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. In the possession of government officials serving on boards because of their official capacities, such documents become public records (see Greensboro Attorney's opinion, page 2).

Robert was a long-time critic of Downtown Greensboro Incorporated. I was rather surprised when I heard he got a seat on their board. They must have thought he could bring something to the table. Now, he has. These are good ideas not just for DGI, but for all non-profits that benefit from public financing. The City of Greensboro should consider making them mandatory conditions for receiving public funds.

No objections from Council as City bestows special secrecy on candidates

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro has a public records request tracking system, PIRT, they call it: Public Information Request Tracking. It is supposedly for the purpose of tracking requests for city records.

It's a sham. A costly, time wasting, frustrating sham that has been perverted into a means of delay, bullying and intimidation imposed on a select few members of the public.

Only a small number of certain individuals' requests are entered into the tracking system, those mostly being some local bloggers, labor representatives and reporters from Yes!Weekly—whom the City previously tried to stop from publishing with a secret lawsuit (the City lost).

People who escape the tracking of the PIRT system and have their requests answered without being monitored include:

1. Elected representatives, including members of city council
2. Professional media (excluding Yes!Weekly)
3. Lawyers
4. Engineers and architects  
5. Real estate and business people
6. Former city employees

City Manager Denise Turner-Roth goes one step further and heaps extra scrutiny on the few people entered into the PIRT system by publishing their names and the information they requested in a memo that she sends to city council, city staff, community bigwigs and local media every Friday.

Until recently, the Manager's weekly memo included the requests of challenger city council candidates, people like George Hartzman (mayor), Ben Holder (at-large) and Sal Leone (district 5), but not the requests made by incumbent candidates.

Now, in a mind-numbing exhibition of just how rudderless the City's management is in their approach to transparency, the City Manager has decided that, rather than level the playing field by including the requests made by sitting city council people in her weekly memo along with those made by challenging candidates, no candidate requests—challengers' or incumbents'—will be included in her weekly memo.

Think about that:

People elected to represent us and those seeking to represent us, the very people of whom we should expect the greatest transparency and accountability, are being given special privileges by the City Manager so that they may avoid scrutiny. She is wrapping a special cloak of secrecy around their interactions with city government while continuing to subject a small group of other citizens to extra attention.

As astonishing as all of that is, the real kicker is that all of our elected representatives on city council, every single one of them, is aware of and has voiced no public objection to this practice. Remember that the next time you hear a city council person talk about how important government transparency is to them.

I asked to be afforded the same courtesy the City Manager has provided to candidates: to have my records requests excluded from the Manager's weekly memo, I was told that privilege is only for candidates. Yes, I was specifically told that the special cloak of secrecy is only for those who do or may represent us.

Worth noting is that mayoral candidate George Hartzman expressed his objection to the policy quite vociferously. As he wrote in an email to City Council about his requests being removed from the Manager's weekly memo:

"I most certainly did not ask to have candidate requests hidden, as it would contradict the transparency theme of my campaign. I advocated for all requests, including those from incumbents, be included."

Changing diapers

GREENSBORO, NC -- Ben Holder, candidate for city council at-large, and I were discussing the situation regarding the Greensboro City Manager's boneheaded decision to unequally and unfairly put the records requests and questions asked by non-incumbent city council candidates on a special webpage—publicity and scrutiny from which incumbent candidates are exempted, as the Manager has explicitly said—and of her request of city staff to notify her office whenever a candidate asks for information.

Ben and I were both bothered by the fact that, while we each have some important matters of public interest, health and safety we want to discuss during the public speakers' portion of the next City Council meeting, we find ourselves compelled to address this most recent mess instead -- again. (For me, the last detour was to address Mayor Robbie Perkins' refusal to stand up for Greensboro against WGHP's and WFMY's sensationalized fabrications of "hundreds of teens fighting" in downtown Greensboro.)

It's hard to move forward, to get any momentum, when you are constantly having to pit to fix a flat tire. It's like we have drivers who keep intentionally running over debris or, to use a golf analogy, we are constantly having to help our team captain find her ball in the woods.

Ben put it best: We have to keep changing diapers. Everything else has to wait when there is a poopie mess.

That's the Greensboro we have now. Mendacious, small and too often distracted by avoidable messes.

Instead of an inspiring effort to involve the community at-large in raising funds for a downtown performing arts center, we had to pull over to fix the flat caused by the Mayor, the News & Record and others who said there was already $20 million raised for the project when that wasn't true.

"Bring her in here, boys, we got a tire down."

Instead of reaching the green in two with a chance for birdie, City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan shanked one hard into the woods with his lawsuit attempting to stop the publication of Yes!Weekly newspaper. Access to public records, already woefully bad, ground to a halt, money was spent and the cause and extent of the reasons for the suit remain, to this day, unclear.

"Keep looking, ya'll, it's got to be around here somewhere."

Now, instead of heading into election season with everybody on a level playing field, The City Manager has inappropriately inserted herself into the process, tainting what should be sacrosanct fairness and creating another unnecessary diversion.

"Just a minute, kids, the little one has made a mess."

But here's the thing: Mistakes happen. People make bad decisions on occasion. Heck, I've had my share, no doubt. It's how one responds that matters and that's where Greensboro stumbles—a lot.

Why did we not see:

• The mayor come forward and say, "I was wrong to tell the people at the East Greensboro Summit that $20 million in private contributions had been procured for a downtown performing arts center. That' wasn't true. We are a long way from that, actually, so let's all pull together and start raising some money."
  
  

• The City Attorney tell City Council and the public, "Our attempt to silence Yes!Weekly newspaper was against Supreme Court precedent prohibiting prior restraint and we erred in trying to stop their publication," instead of buffaloing City Council and the public about what they did and why, as he did.  (Holder still wants a clear public explanation of what transpired that led the City to think it needed to take such extreme action. I do too.)
  
  

• The mayor step up and say, "WFMY and WGHP should not have exaggerated what happened downtown. If they think I said there were up to five hundred teens fighting, they misunderstood. There were a few fights, involving a few people over a period of many hours that sent some crowds running at times."
  
  

• The City Manager say, "I didn't think it through. It's unfair to use city resources to put some candidates under public scrutiny and not others. We'll stop."
  
  

But, no. Instead, the very people who are supposed to be our "leaders"—people paid good money to do a good job—double down on their mistakes or ignore them and allow them to stand, uncorrected, to Greensboro's detriment. Their colleagues and bosses on City Council are no better. What, other than spite or ill intent, causes the kind of intransigence we see repeatedly in response to errors from our civic leaders? I'm at a loss.

Records request

GREENSBORO, NC -- I submitted the following records request to the City of Greensboro this morning:

"Conforming with the city's ability and willingness to make public the questions and requests asked of city staff by city council challenger candidates and the responses the city provides to them, I am requesting to receive the same for incumbent candidates from now through November 5, 2013. Please provide me with this information on an ongoing basis with at least the same regularity as the city makes such information available for challenger candidates."

(Hyperlinks added.)

City makes a portion of Yes!Weekly emails available, for an instant

GREENSBORO, NC -- More than two months after they were first requested, the city of Greensboro finally made a portion of the much anticipated Yes!Weekly emails available to the public—for a matter of hours.

These were among the emails that were supposedly so dangerous they compelled the City of Greensboro to sue (unsuccessfully) to stop them from being published, a black-eye permanently attached to Greensboro's reputation.

The City placed the emails on their FTP server, a website from where they could be downloaded but, according to the city's  public affairs, the FTP site removes all files at midnight every night and so it was with the Yes!Weekly emails. They were available for a portion of a day and now are gone.

There are two areas of failure with the City's response to public records requests: process and culture. The broken culture manifests itself in the obstinance and arrogance of upper management as they flaunt the law and ridicule requesters; the broken process manifests itself in things like an FTP server that deletes all files at midnight.

More public records obfuscation

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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.

Mujeeb

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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.

//////

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

Big laughs at City's public records meetings

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro held a meeting yesterday to explain and solicit comments about their policies and procedures for responding to public records. City Council representatives who did NOT attend include:

• Mayor Robbie Perkins
• Yvonne Johnson
• Nancy Hoffman
• T. Dianne Bellamy Small
• Jim Kee
• Zack Matheny

Councilors Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Tony Wilkins were in attendance.

One thing that is clear after the meeting is that City Manager Denise Turner Roth is not running the show. During a city council meeting last month, Turner Roth, in explaining the City's response to records requests said, "Process will not become an excuse for delay." For emphasis, she added, "I cannot emphasize that enough."

Yet, when this blogger asked at the meeting why a two-month old request by Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record for the emails provided to Yes!Weekly (those that prompted their reportage on police surveillance) had not yet resulted in the release of a single email to Amanda, the reply, courtesy of City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan, was stupefyingly hilarious.

Understand; at this meeting where city staff were falling all over themselves to assure the public that they release records as fast as they can—that process is not a cause for delay—when it came to Amanda's request for what are reportedly around 11,000 emails, they were asked why the City's processes were incapable of clearing even a single email for release after two whole months. 11,000 emails, two months and a process that has not cleared one for release.

Rather than say, "Hmmm, maybe our processes are causing undue delay," we got the most eye-rolling gut busting "explainaaaaaaaaaaaaation" from the City Attorney about how there are multiple steps for review, involving different departments, and things go back and forth and get bundled together and carefully reviewed and there should be some records available on Wednesday and... yada yada yada...

This of course made Turner Roth appear a liar or irrelevant and Shah-Kahn incapable of attaching anything meaningful to the reality of the situation. Funny. In a very sad way. Too bad some City Councilors will remain in the dark. Who were they again?

• Mayor Robbie Perkins
• Yvonne Johnson
• Nancy Hoffman
• T. Dianne Bellamy Small
• Jim Kee
• Zack Matheny

City records policy presentation

GREENSBORO, NC -- This is the presentation I made at yesterday's meeting with the City regarding their public records policies and procedures. It includes areas where the City is failing, examples and recommendations for improvements.

Greensboro records requests policy recommendations

Ye shall know them by their fruits

GREENSBORO, NC -- I'm inclined to agree with Rhino Times editor John Hammer when he writes: "Council seems fine with building a huge wall between government and the people."

Why? Because of council's actions—or rather, their inaction. They are taking no action to participate in or make the public partners in the changes underway to the City's public records procedures. It's just not that important to this Council.

Trees are important. Council formed a subcommittee to examine the tree cutting ordinance.

Substandard housing is important. There is a subcommittee for housing. 

There is a subcommittee for economic development and one for downtown entertainment facilities.

Mayor Robbie Perkins now wants to form a subcommittee to accommodate the interest of "young professionals" in influencing downtown. 

When an important issue needs a sustained effort with everybody at the table, council forms a subcommittee.

They will not do so for public records. Transparency and openness—and the accountability they bring—are bedrocks, fundamentals without which everything else is in jeopardy, yet City staff have been behind closed doors for seven weeks crafting new policies that clamp down on access to public records that they only now want to "explain" to the public with a day of meetings. These meetings are not to collaborate, but to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to a one-way, top down, exclusive process.

By their inaction, Council approves.

As the Bible says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits," and lip service on transparency and openness are not going to cut it in the next election.

City public information response: delay, obfuscate & manipulate

GREENSBORO, NC -- In an insightful piece about the City of Greensboro's plans to add multiple new layers of bureaucratic intervention to public records access, Rhino Times editor John Hammer warns "that public records requests that should take minutes may take months."

Hammer is right to be concerned about additional delay to a process that is already woefully slow and I have a convenient and disturbing recent example.

Two weeks to forward a message from the Chief of Police

In July of last year, I made a request for records documenting access to City surveillance cameras. In recent months, I have been going back and forth with a city public relations employee about why the response to my request only included information about private security guards (no city employees or others). After months of what felt like banging my head against a wall, the employee admitted she did not have an answer for that and said she would forward my question to others, including the Police Department, for an answer.

The next day, on a Saturday, no less, Police Chief Ken Miller responded to the city employee. When did I finally receive the Chief's response? Two weeks later. 

That's right, the Chief of Police jumps to answer a citizen's question on a weekend and the City's handler lets it hibernate in her inbox for two weeks before forwarding it along (and that only after the Chief's reply was misrepresented to me and I asked for his original response—more on that in a minute). Hammer is right to be concerned.

Here is the header from the Chief's original response:

Here it is being forwarded to me:

Get me a rewrite!

As I mentioned, I had to prod the City employee to send me the Chief's email after I received from her what she falsely represented as quotations from the Chief of Police and a police officer. Yes, she took emails sent to her, rewrote them, put them in quotation marks and wrote, "Here is the response I received..." (and sent it 12 days after the Chief's response.) Here is what she sent:

Good evening,

Here is the response that I received from the Police Chief and also from the Officer who supervises Lankford who provides our security for facilities:

“The City hires Lankford to provide security to facilities, which includes monitoring City cameras in the video room. GPD cannot access these cameras from the cars and Police does not yet have a command center, so Lankford would be the City’s eyes/ears on the cameras.”

“Two unarmed Lankford Security Service Officers monitor the cameras in the Camera Room located in the basement of the MMOB. The Camera Room is a secure room with a swipe card access. The only people who have access to the room are the two Security Officers, the Police Lieutenant who supervises facilities security and the three Security Office employees. If a visitor comes to the Security Office to request a video a request form must be completed by the requesting party, reviewed by and approved by Police. Also anyone that comes into the room must fill out a roster form that is kept at the entrance to the room. The Security Guards gain access to the system through a password protected log in. David Hayes (City IT) is the System Administrator.”

Here is the actual email from the Chief. The portions edited by the City employee are in brackets:

The City hires Lankford to provide security to facilities, which includes monitoring City cameras in the video room. [It is cheaper than hiring police officers for the same task and doesn't require the training or authority that police officers require.  While I have not seen the document that the City sent to Roch, I suspect it reflects this monitoring activity, which is why he only sees security access.  I am not aware that] GPD [can] access these cameras from the cars and [we do] not yet have a command center, so Lankford would be our eyes/ears on the cameras.

[I think a meeting with Roch may help him understand things a little better.  We have no conspiracy going on anything, but the PIRT process is not a very good way to address his concerns on this or the DNA issue.  I do not expect him to agree with our position on things, but it may help reduce the constant barrage of PIRTs from him.]

The other reply from the supervising officer was also edited from its original, but you get the point.

Barrage or cascade?

Did you read the last paragraph of the Chief's real response? I find it troubling that the Chief is of the opinion that it is for him to decide what is the best way for the city to "address" my "concerns." The records of the City are the people's records. They are to be provided when requested, no questions asked. That's the law. The Chief should know that. It's not for him or anybody else to determine whether or not providing public records is the best way to respond to a citizen who has asked for public records. If the City wants to try to manipulate a message or manage public perception, they are free to try do so, but not as a substitute for providing public records.

As for the "barrage," my original request for records documenting access to surveillance cameras was a single request—made eight months ago. It is only because the city's response was deficient that I had to make subsequent requests to learn how my request was handled, who saw it, who didn't and what types of records actually exist that should have been provided in response to my original request. This is not a barrage, it is a cascade—a bothersome result of the City's own pathetic actions.

As a result of those additional requests, I've identified at least nine types of records that should have been provided in response to my initial request — records I did not receive. I've made nine new requests for those records specifically. It's not my fault nor my pleasure that the City couldn't simply fill my request when I first asked.

[Updated for clarity]

ACLU asks Greensboro police for SWAT/technology info

GREENSBORO, NC -- The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina has requested records from the Greensboro Police Department "regarding Special Weapons and Tactics ("SWAT") teams, as well as your acquisition and use of cutting-edge technology."

Here is the letter:

ACLU request of Greensboro Police Department by Roch101