What You Can Learn From A Public Records Request At The State Legislature

The Hayride ^ | 20 Dec 12 | MacAoidh

[LSUfan]

No, you won’t learn what you’re seeking to learn in the request itself. Don’t be ridiculous. That will take months.

What you’ll learn is exactly how much effort the people with a legal duty to service the public’s constitutional right to disclosure of public records will put into failing in that duty while concocting an excuse for that failure.

Yesterday, we went to court against Butch Speer, the clerk of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and Glenn Koepp, the secretary of the state Senate. Our business there was to secure a writ of mandamus against Speer and Koepp in order to force them to produce e-mail correspondence between State Reps. John Bel Edwards and Pat Smith and State Sens. Ben Nevers and Karen Carter Peterson on one side, and the four most prominent officials of the state’s teacher unions – Steve Monaghan and Mary Patricia Wray from the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and Joyce Haynes and Michael Walker Jones of the Louisiana Association of Educators – on the other. We made that request because we were interested to see whether those teacher union bosses were, in fact, supplying the Democrat legislators in question with talking points – or more than that – to be used in the debate over Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reforms.

[LSUfan]

Here is a prime example of how the bureaucracy breaks the law routinely and is not held accountable. Two bureaucrats at the Louisiana legislature essentially play "hide the ball" with a public records request in an attempt to not comply with the law. They use IT as an excuse.

In a previous life I presided over the IT department of a $200 million per year company (I was not an IT expert, but IT came under me in the chain of command). Even back in 2001 we could produce this type of information in an expeditious manner to settle customer disputes and to handle compliance issues.

What these two assclowns are saying is total bullcrap...

[asinclair]

I was once served with a subpoena to produce all mails associated with a Web customer account, and to collect all e-mail communications until further notice. I was given 24 hour to comply.

I met the deadline.

I wonder if I could have shuffled my shoes in the same way and gotten away with it. Somehow, I doubt it.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

No matter how long it takes for the sleaze balls to get the requested emails out, there will be no info in them that will make them look bad or culpable. They redact anything damning. Period. There is no way in Hades they would turn over anything like that. They will break the law further to ensure they do not comply.