At 12:07 PM today, the Parents' Coalition e-mailed the members of the Montgomery County Delegation seeking access to the FY2022 School Bus Monitoring System and Stop Safety Review report that was to be publicly available under a new Maryland law.
The Parents' Coalition had e-mailed the Montgomery County Government Public Information Officer on January 21, 2023, with the same request. Montgomery County Government was responsible for creating the report. The Montgomery County Government Public Information Officer never responded to our request.
However, within 30 minutes of our request to members of the Montgomery County Delegation, Senator Ben Kramer's office responded and provided the link to the report.
Thank you to Senator Ben Kramer and his staff for excellent constituent services and immediately providing the public with information that they were entitled to under Maryland law.
Here is the link to the FY 2022 School Bus Monitoring System and Stop Safety Review.
This is the first report under MD Code, Transportation, § 8-664 and 2022 HB0813 / CH0216 enacted during the 2022 Regular Session of the Maryland General Assembly to publicly provide information on the County’s school bus monitoring camera program and steps Montgomery County has taken to reduce violations of passing a stopped school bus through bus stop reviews and driver outreach.
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From: Parents CoalitionSent: Friday, January 27, 2023 12:07 PM
Subject: Where is public access to the School Bus Camera Annual Report mandated by the legislature?
In recent meetings the Montgomery County Delegation has referenced the first School Bus Monitoring System (stop arm cameras) annual report that was to be created and made publicly available by law.
From: MGA Library
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2023 12:33 PM
To: Kramer, Ben Senator Ben.Kramer@senate.state.md.us
Subject: RE: Request for Document FW: Where is public access to the School Bus Camera Annual Report mandated by the legislature?
Good afternoon,
The following is a link to the PDF of that report:
https://dlslibrary.state.md.
The catalog record also has a link for a data download. When you click on it, it downloads a spreadsheet with years and where the violations occurred:
https://dlslibrary.state.md.
Tammy Shay
Legislative Director for
Senator Ben Kramer
District 19
Miller Senate Office Building
11 Bladen Street, Room 401
Annapolis, MD 21401
410-841-3151 ph
410-841-3740 fax
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Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2023 10:00 PM
To: Hudson, Barry <Barry.Hudson@montgomerycountymd.gov>
Subject: MPIA for Bus Camera Report
Barry Hudson is listed as the officially designated custodian of records for Montgomery County government by the Attorney General. Mr. Hudson completely disregards requests from members of the public. He never answers his office phone and he does not return calls from members of the public . He is also in charge of the MC311 service, which might explain some of the difficulties with MC311. Mr. Hudson was also the subject of an ethics complaint asserting that he was operating his own private public relations firm on the side without approval from the Ethics Board. After he was informed of the ethics complaint, Mr. Hudson shut down his firm's web site, although it isn't clear whether he has actually suspended operations of his side business.
ReplyDeleteI am not normally a supporter of Ben Kramer as his actions generally do not align with my verbatim-constitutional philosophy.
ReplyDeleteThat having been said, I will also.publicly praise Mr Kramer for providing what Montgomery County government should have done in the first place.
Montgomery once again has gone out of its way to portray itself as dealing in secrecy and misinformation, in this case a lack of publicly appropriate (and required) information.
Well done, Mr Kramer...well done.