The Observation Deck

Meg Ostrowski wrote:

Brian Essi wrote:Butler and the city chose not to cooperate in the Attorney General mediation process that was initiated, so a complaint was filed concerning over 100 unanswered requests and/or denied or incomplete responses.

Then, when the due date of the city's answer to the complaint approached, Butler responded with over 40 emails--denying the majority of unanswered requests. In fact he denied 50 requests in just one email.

So that's it? No recourse?

No. The case is pending in the Cuyhoga County Court of Appeals and that Court will decide the facts and the law and which records the City must produce (not the City or Butler).

So far, the City just filed their answer last week so the legal case has just begun.

All correspondence and communications – electronic or otherwise – to or from Dru Siley and any potential purchaser and/or developer of the Lakewood Hospital site January 1, 2013, through the date of the response.”

This needs to be bumped up because it's very important - it illuminates the extent to which our public servants are going to avoid providing information to the public that it is LEGALLY REQUIRED to provide.

There is no justification for saying that it's too difficult to find, or the equally preposterous excuse that they "don't organize records that way."

It makes NO difference how they choose to organize the records. The information should be readily accessible, particularly if it involves emails. A click here and there should be all it takes.

If a developer was interested in the hospital parcel, who they gonna call? The mayor, a council member, or the planning director. Any of those contacts, whether initiated by the developer or by the public servant, should have been documented and is subject to a public records request.

Butler is clearly impeding the production of these documents. WHY?

Is it that they are incriminatory to himself, Siley, or the mayor?

Or perhaps they "don't exist" because no developer ever expressed interest in the parcels. That would be embarrassing for the mayor and Build Lakewood crowd because they repeatedly insisted "national developers" were interested!

So we are back to the usual - who lied and when?

Does Butler lie when he claims he can't find the records? Did the mayor lie when he claimed developers were interested?

No scenario bodes well for these public servants - they appear to be blocking public access and/or lying.

Isn't this getting a bit tiresome?

Let's set some common sense standards.

1) Police response should be 30 to 60 seconds for an emergency. It generally is.

2) Fire response should be 30 to 60 seconds. It usually is.

3) EMS response should be 30 to 60 seconds. It usually is.

None of the above responders mess around. They get on it and quick.

I would suggest that the response for a public information request be 24 hours. Anything less is deliberate or incompetent.

And, to monitor this proposed standard, any discussion with any non emergency City employee should begin with the employees adherence to this standard.

And, that includes in particular discussions with elected officials.

Stan Austin

Stan Austin wrote:Let's set some common sense standards.

1) Police response should be 30 to 60 seconds for an emergency. It generally is.

2) Fire response should be 30 to 60 seconds. It usually is.

3) EMS response should be 30 to 60 seconds. It usually is.

None of the above responders mess around. They get on it and quick.

I would suggest that the response for a public information request be 24 hours. Anything less is deliberate or incompetent.

And, to monitor this proposed standard, any discussion with any non emergency City employee should begin with the employees adherence to this standard.

And, that includes in particular discussions with elected officials.

Stan Austin

I could not agree more.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the calculation at City Hall is that enough of us simply don't care. The hedge, the gamble is to keep stonewalling. Keep deliberately withholding the truth .You count on the weak. You count on the disinterested. You count on a complicit City Council, ( O'Leary, Anderson, Marx and sooner than later, the Orwell quoting, Dan O'Malley). You count on a reticent Plain Dealer. And as a result if you're Kevin Butler, Lakewood's Law Director, you treat public record requests as if they were your property, your sole prerogative to do with as you will. Lakewood this is a mess. This is a disgrace.