City of Carlinville refuses to answer Attorney General’s inquiry on records denial –

CARLINVILLE, IL. (ECWd) –

From all appearances, the City of Carlinville thinks they don’t have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

First, they wrongly tried to extort $200 from me to answer a FOIA request by wrongly claiming my request for public records was for a “commercial purpose” -we covered that in a previous article.

After receiving that letter I filed for a Request For Review of a FOIA denial thru the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (“PAC”) asking them to look into the wrongful denial of public records.

The PAC sent a letter of inquiry on February 22, 2017 to the city attorney, Mr. Daniel P. Schuering of Schuering Law, asking for the city to explain their position on why I was labeled as a commercial requester.

On March 1, 2017, the attorney telephoned the PAC asking for an extension of time to respond, and the PAC denied the extension because the law does not allow for an extension of time. Seven days is the required response time to the PAC’s letter of inquiry.

Today, the PAC sent another letter to the city’s attorney asking for their response to the February 22, 2017 letter.

It is now clear the City of Carlinville will do whatever it takes to hide the records I requested, and I didn’t request much – mainly petition sheets and agendas, minutes, and recordings for the electoral board meetings.

Again I have to ask, what is so important to them that they go to these lengths to hide it?

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