The Transparency Challenge: Report Your Requests & Results Here

[Brian Essi]

I am asking you to take The Transparency Challenge. You can personally verify for yourself whether the city administration has a transparency problem. This is quite easy. You can then report back your findings in this thread or your own thread. Here it is!

The Transparency Challenge

All you have to do is send an email or a letter to the City of Lakewood Law Department as a public records request under Ohio law and ask for:

1. Any documents in the possession of the City of Lakewood related to any agreement to retain the Huron Road consulting firm limited to 2015.

OR

2. Any emails in the possession of the City of Lakewood between any city council member and any public employee in the city administration related to the Master Agreement in 2015.

OR

3. Any topic of interest related to the City of Lakewood that you would like see a document on.

You may judge transparency on timeliness, completeness and the difficulty in receiving what you have reasonably requested. That's The Transparency Challenge!

Good luck!

Let's follow through on Mr. Kindt's idea and report your requests and the timing of the City's responses here.

The requests should be mailed to:

Kevin Butler, Director of Law
City of Lakewood Law Department
12650 Detroit Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

OR email:

kevin.butler@lakewoodoh.net

Note: If you don't get a satisfactory response and you wish to file a complaint in court or the court of claims, you will need send your request via certified U.S. Mail return receipt requested or hand deliver it and get Mr. Butler's office to sign a receipt when you drop it off.

A copy of the complete statute is here: http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/149.43

I have attached and example of a letter requesting records here:

Final PRR1-173.pdf

(8.75 MiB) Downloaded 123 times

After almost 10 months, the City has not provided documents in response to many of these requests and they are the subject of a pending legal action.
Transparency Problem confirmed!

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice.

[Lori Allen _]

Brian,
I hope the records you requested, that Butler has been holding hostage, are not in the dozens and dozens of garbage bags full of shredded paper seen in the garbage at city hall!

[Mark Kindt]

Mr. Essi: Thank you for re-posting this with the added materials.

For the non-lawyer reader: There is a secondary problem here.

If the city administration refuses to comply with your records request and you have to sue them; then they use the fact that they are being sued to impose more delay into their response. It plays out into an absurd result, that ultimately defeats the purpose of the statute.

Or, at least, that's what it seems like in Lakewood. As I said previously, other experienced lawyers have complained to me about this problem.

The next time you speak with a city official, there are three questions that cut to the chase:

1. When will the city adopt an ethics-in-government policy?

2. When will the city comply with the Ohio open-meetings statute?

3. When will the city comply with the Ohio public records request laws?

And, a bonus question:

4. When are my taxes going to increase?

[Lori Allen _]

There already is an ethics policy for city hall employees. We appear to lack the intelligence / effort or both to enforce it. Several complaints have already been sent to the ethics commission for the State of Ohio. After several discussions with this department, it appears that the ethics commission dropped the ball.
I suspect interference from Antonio and Sweeney.

[mjkuhns]

I made some formal public records requests, mailed on January 16. I received responses on Jan. 25 to three.

My requests (which are, now, themselves a matter of public record) included:

1. Correspondence between the mayor and the president of city council, Sept. 19 to 26, 2015.
2. Correspondence between the fire chief and other city employees or officials, October 17 to 23, 2015.
3. Correspondence or other records relating to City of Lakewood Community Bulletin, Feb. 1 to April 30, 2016. This was refused as overly broad, but I received several documents which relate to the topic.

I also requested correspondence between the president of city council and other city employees or officials, February 1-11, 2016. I am advised that the city is checking this for "nonpublic or privileged" content that would call for redacting, and expect that material will follow.

I encourage others to make use of this important right, if they have any interest in learning more about our government's workings.

I made my particular requests based on possible historical interest. I find that they do contain material of such interest, although nothing that is likely to astonish. Given the total volume, I have no plans to publish everything to the web. If anyone has specific questions, however, or would like me to forward the entire contents do let me know. (No sense in wasting anyone's time re-filing for material that has been released.)

Having skimmed all of the records received thus far, I do feel like highlighting one statement from a lengthy e-mail by Galen Schuerlein of Melamed Communications (subsequently forwarded from Council's president to the mayor et al.). In the process of planning a coordinated response to Dennis Kucinich's Sept. 21, 2015 remarks, Schuerlein proposes "they want to save a building, we want to save healthcare." I was struck by the irony of this statement. I was present for Kucinich's remarks and, if I recall correctly, when asked "well what would satisfy you" he pointed to an architectural rendering of a substantially rebuilt hospital complex, which to all appearances would have involved demolishing the original building entirely. (This rendering, I believe, came from the study prepared by Westlake Reed Leskosky in 2006.)

We all get things wrong now and then certainly. All the same, I'm left with an impression that correcting the record was not exactly the purpose for which public resources were placed in Mr. Schuerlein's hands.

[mjkuhns]

And I now have the correspondence between the president of city council and other city employees or officials, February 1-11, 2016. Again, do let me know if anyone wants some or all of the records I received.

[Brian Essi]

I made some formal public records requests, mailed on January 16. I received responses on Jan. 25 to three.

My requests (which are, now, themselves a matter of public record) included:

1. Correspondence between the mayor and the president of city council, Sept. 19 to 26, 2015.
2. Correspondence between the fire chief and other city employees or officials, October 17 to 23, 2015.
3. Correspondence or other records relating to City of Lakewood Community Bulletin, Feb. 1 to April 30, 2016. This was refused as overly broad, but I received several documents which relate to the topic.

I also requested correspondence between the president of city council and other city employees or officials, February 1-11, 2016. I am advised that the city is checking this for "nonpublic or privileged" content that would call for redacting, and expect that material will follow.

I encourage others to make use of this important right, if they have any interest in learning more about our government's workings.

I made my particular requests based on possible historical interest. I find that they do contain material of such interest, although nothing that is likely to astonish. Given the total volume, I have no plans to publish everything to the web. If anyone has specific questions, however, or would like me to forward the entire contents do let me know. (No sense in wasting anyone's time re-filing for material that has been released.)

Having skimmed all of the records received thus far, I do feel like highlighting one statement from a lengthy e-mail by Galen Schuerlein of Melamed Communications (subsequently forwarded from Council's president to the mayor et al.). In the process of planning a coordinated response to Dennis Kucinich's Sept. 21, 2015 remarks, Schuerlein proposes "they want to save a building, we want to save healthcare." I was struck by the irony of this statement. I was present for Kucinich's remarks and, if I recall correctly, when asked "well what would satisfy you" he pointed to an architectural rendering of a substantially rebuilt hospital complex, which to all appearances would have involved demolishing the original building entirely. (This rendering, I believe, came from the study prepared by Westlake Reed Leskosky in 2006.)

We all get things wrong now and then certainly. All the same, I'm left with an impression that correcting the record was not exactly the purpose for which public resources were placed in Mr. Schuerlein's hands.

Mr. Kuhns,

9-12 days is longer than the norm for local government turn around --72 hours for most requests is considered reasonable.

But for Lakewood, I think you got a very favorable turn around.

I have over 100 requests pending from March, May and September of 2016 that are held up by lawyers' gymnastics.

Also, here are a few more that I filed just last week:

Final PRR 324-346.pdf

(3.2 MiB) Downloaded 131 times

Summers responded to Butler and me within 12 minutes with a promise to deliver 2 documents via the city website:

From: "Summers, Mike" <Mike.Summers@lakewoodoh.net>
To: Brian Essi
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 1:35 PM
Subject: RE: PRR 324-

Kevin,

The market study and RFQ will be posted on the City’s website on Monday. This should address numerous requests for this information.

From: Brian Essi
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2017 1:23 PM
To: Butler, Kevin
Cc: 'mediation@ohioattorneygeneral.gov'; Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost Open Government Unit; Summers, Mike; Pae, Jennifer; Petrus, Jeannine; Schuster, Keith; Anderson, David; Bullock, Tom; Litten, John; Marx, Cynthia; Nowlin, Ryan; O'Leary, Sam; O'Malley, Daniel
Subject: Re: PRR 324-

Dear Director Butler,

Please see the attached records requests PRR 324-346.

Kind Regards,

Brian J. Essi

Two documents were posted on the city website yesterday (within 4 days of my request) as Summers promised to Butler.

Does that count as a timely response to my request since they had planned the roll out Monday anyway and had the documents last Thursday?

Is the City failing the Transparency Challenge?

Is the City more responsive to some citizens over others?

Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Stay tuned....

[Brian Essi]

I made some formal public records requests, mailed on January 16. I received responses on Jan. 25 to three.

My requests (which are, now, themselves a matter of public record) included:

1. Correspondence between the mayor and the president of city council, Sept. 19 to 26, 2015.
2. Correspondence between the fire chief and other city employees or officials, October 17 to 23, 2015.
3. Correspondence or other records relating to City of Lakewood Community Bulletin, Feb. 1 to April 30, 2016. This was refused as overly broad, but I received several documents which relate to the topic.

I also requested correspondence between the president of city council and other city employees or officials, February 1-11, 2016. I am advised that the city is checking this for "nonpublic or privileged" content that would call for redacting, and expect that material will follow.

I encourage others to make use of this important right, if they have any interest in learning more about our government's workings.

I made my particular requests based on possible historical interest. I find that they do contain material of such interest, although nothing that is likely to astonish. Given the total volume, I have no plans to publish everything to the web. If anyone has specific questions, however, or would like me to forward the entire contents do let me know. (No sense in wasting anyone's time re-filing for material that has been released.)

Having skimmed all of the records received thus far, I do feel like highlighting one statement from a lengthy e-mail by Galen Schuerlein of Melamed Communications (subsequently forwarded from Council's president to the mayor et al.). In the process of planning a coordinated response to Dennis Kucinich's Sept. 21, 2015 remarks, Schuerlein proposes "they want to save a building, we want to save healthcare." I was struck by the irony of this statement. I was present for Kucinich's remarks and, if I recall correctly, when asked "well what would satisfy you" he pointed to an architectural rendering of a substantially rebuilt hospital complex, which to all appearances would have involved demolishing the original building entirely. (This rendering, I believe, came from the study prepared by Westlake Reed Leskosky in 2006.)

We all get things wrong now and then certainly. All the same, I'm left with an impression that correcting the record was not exactly the purpose for which public resources were placed in Mr. Schuerlein's hands.

Mr. Kuhns,

9-12 days is longer than the norm for local government turn around --72 hours for most requests is considered reasonable.

But for Lakewood, I think you got a very favorable turn around.

I have over 100 requests pending from March, May and September of 2016 that are held up by lawyers' gymnastics.

Also, here are a few more that I filed just last week:

Final PRR 324-346.pdf

Summers responded to Butler and me within 12 minutes with a promise to deliver 2 documents via the city website:

From: "Summers, Mike" <Mike.Summers@lakewoodoh.net>
To: Brian Essi
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 1:35 PM
Subject: RE: PRR 324-

Kevin,

The market study and RFQ will be posted on the City’s website on Monday. This should address numerous requests for this information.

From: Brian Essi
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2017 1:23 PM
To: Butler, Kevin
Cc: 'mediation@ohioattorneygeneral.gov'; Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost Open Government Unit; Summers, Mike; Pae, Jennifer; Petrus, Jeannine; Schuster, Keith; Anderson, David; Bullock, Tom; Litten, John; Marx, Cynthia; Nowlin, Ryan; O'Leary, Sam; O'Malley, Daniel
Subject: Re: PRR 324-

Dear Director Butler,

Please see the attached records requests PRR 324-346.

Kind Regards,

Brian J. Essi

Two documents were posted on the city website yesterday (within 4 days of my request) as Summers promised to Butler.

Does that count as a timely response to my request since they had planned the roll out Monday anyway and had the documents last Thursday?

Is the City failing the Transparency Challenge?

Is the City more responsive to some citizens over others?

Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Stay tuned....

Just reporting back on my February 2, 2017 records requests.

As of today only, Mr. Butler has responded to only 11 of the 22 requests. It appears that the 11 that Mr. Butler has not responded might be sensitive--they involve (1) Mayor Summers behind the scenes interactions with Council on the Hospital Development RFQ and market study and (2) Jenn Pae's interaction with the CPA heading the 2915 and 2016 audit of the City.

Hmmm.