Clark Co. (ECWd) -
In several recent Freedom of Information Act requests for public records, it became clear to us that the Clark County Park District Director, Charity Murphy, was not completely familiar with the FOIA Act.
In one request she insisted on redacting things that were not subject to redaction, in another she decided all on her own to print 2257 pages of documents - presumably to make me pay for them - when they were stored electronically, and they possess the capability to electronically redact them. I had requested them in electronic format and the law states they have to provide them in that format, or another electronic format, or on paper at the option of the requester. I was never given that option.
So now, the Park District will be involved in yet another FOIA lawsuit that will be filed next week for their alleged violation(s) of Section 6 of FOIA - "Authority to charge fees" and improper redactions.
Back to the purpose of this article,,,
With all of these obvious violation, I started wondering why, if the law is clear, can this continue to be violated.
So, someone FOIA'ed the Attorney General's office for a copy of Charity Murphy's FOIA training certificate - something that is mandatory if you are acting as a FOIA officer, or as an assistant FOIA officer.
The AG's office replied like we thought they would - "No records response to you request".
So here we have the executive director of a public body that cannot even become trained on FOIA in order to comply with the law. It is mandatory and can be taken online in less than an hour.
4 Comments
ECWDogs
Posted at 12:15h, 07 MayClark Co. Park District – Director not FOIA trained – http://t.co/vztY4HNh44
jannie
Posted at 12:54h, 07 MayI wonder why anything would be redacted — Since minutes in Executive Committee (closed sessions) aren’t available. The voting is in open session and would be available.
Perhaps if someone social security number was shown, but otherwise can’t understand why something is redacted.
Mike Rekart
Posted at 12:59h, 07 MayHi John,
I’ve gotten copies of FOIA training Certs from the public body themselves when I’ve asked for them, …not to rule out that the AG may have missed finding this one in particular, but have you by chance asked to see if she can provide a copy of an update FOIA training Cert?
-Mike
jmkraft
Posted at 13:34h, 07 MayAll training gets captured by the AG’s computer system and tells the name, time, date, length of time signed in, and IP address of those taking the training.