National Sunshine Week

This week is Sunshine Week across the nation. Bet you didn't know there were transparency laws in other places.  Not in Montgomery County, though as we see from the letters secretlyl flying between Shirley Brandman, Pat O'Neill, and Ike Leggett.  Too bad!

What is Sunshine Week?


Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.

Sunshine Week as a national effort is spearheaded by the American Society of News Editors. The key funder has been the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with significant support from ASNE Foundation. In 2011, The Gridiron Club and Foundation contributed $10,000.

Though created by journalists, Sunshine Week is about the public's right to know what its government is doing, and why.

Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan, non-profit initiative.

How can you join the celebration?
Send a Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) Request to MCPS and the County Executive's Office. Ask to see all the information regarding the lease of the Brickyard school property.  Or, choose your own topic!  Here is a sample letter, taken from the Maryland Attorney General's website.  To read more on MPIA and state law, go here.

How can you join the celebration? Send an MPIA to MCPS. Send an MPIA to the County Executive’s office. Ask to see all the information regarding the lease and backroom deals for the Brickyard school property.  Or, choose your own topic.  Here is the address for the County Executive’s office:


Ms. Donna Bigler
Assistant Director
Montgomery County Office of Public Information
101 Monroe Street, 4th FL
Rockville, Maryland 20850

Or email Ms. Bigler at: donna.bigler@montgomerycountymd.gov

And here is the office for Montgomery County Public Schools:
Mr. Dana Tofig
Montgomery County Public Schools
850 Hungerford Drive
Rockville, MD 20850

Email Mr. Tofig at: pio@mcpsmd.org

And here is a sample letter for you to use.  Text taken from the Attorney General's website, here.

This is a request under the Maryland Public Information Act, State Government Article §§ 10-611-628. I request a copy of all records containing the information pertaining to the following. Please send me all records, including telephone logs, minutes, telephone notes, emails, printouts, letters, memoranda, sent or received or recorded regarding >. This is a request for records, regardless of format, medium, or physical characteristics and including electronic records and information, audiotapes, CDs, videotapes and photographs pursuant to the Maryland Public Information Act, State Government Article §§10-611 to 628.

My request includes any telephone messages, voice mail messages, daily agenda and calendars, information about scheduled meetings and/or discussions, whether in-person or over the telephone, agendas for those meetings and/or discussions, participants included in those meetings and/or discussions, minutes of any such meetings and/or discussions, the topics discussed at those meetings and/or discussions, e-mail regarding meetings and/or discussions, e-mail or facsimiles sent as a result of those meetings and/or discussions and transcripts or notes of any such meetings and/or discussions.

If all or any part of this request is denied, I request that I be provided with a written statement of the grounds for the denial. If you determine that some portions of the requested records are exempt from disclosure, please provide me with the portions that can be disclosed.

I also anticipate that I will want copies of some or all of the records sought. Therefore, please advise me as to the cost, if any, for obtaining a copy of the records and the total cost, if any, for all the records described above. If you have adopted a fee schedule for obtaining copies of records and other rules or regulations implementing the Act, please send me a copy.

I look forward to receiving disclosable records promptly and, in any event, to a decision about all of the requested records within 30 days. Thank you for your cooperation. If you have any questions regarding this request, please telephone me at the above number.

Sincerely,

Isn't it fun to get involved in your government?  Good Luck! Post your answers from the County Government here.  Happy Sunshine Week!

TX School system receives Transparency Award

PSJA schools receive transparency award | receive, schools, transparency - Now - TheMonitor.com

...“We’re looking at whether taxpayers go in and see the budget and expenditures,” Texas Comptroller spokesman RJ DeSilva said.

Janet Robles, PSJA Assistant Superintendent for Finance, said that providing such information was key for a government entity.

“We’re in charge of funds, but it’s not our money,” she said...

Fact Check: MCPS PIO demands $347.16 to find lease

More numbers plucked out of thin air by Tofig

Information obtained by the Parents' Coalition indicates that a juicy deal has been cut between MCPS and a company that rents MCPS facilities. This is a particularly interesting deal because we have information that strongly suggests that MCPS is helping the outside company avoid payment of taxes by keeping the terms of the leases secret. To get details about the deal, we asked MCPS for copies of the leases and contracts between MCPS and the outside company.

MCPS Director of Public Information (PIO) Dana Tofig is willing to hand over what is almost certainly just a dozen or so pages -- but only if we fork over $347.16 to "search and prepare records for inspection."  As explained in Tofig's letter below, MCPS has determined that it will take about 13 hours to search for the records, and that's without even knowing how many pages of documentation will be produced.

(Since we don't yet have the leases and contracts to confirm the details of the deal, we have redacted the outside company's name from Tofig's response.)

MCPS PIO says to hand over lots of money

In the meantime, we are seriously wondering just what sort of mess the MCPS files are in if it takes 13 hours to find a few leases.

Father wins long FOIA fight with school board | InsideNova.com

Father wins long FOIA fight with school board | InsideNova.com

He’s been battling for more than two years. Now Woodbridge resident Mark Hjelm will soon get to see high school visitor lists kept from him by the Prince William County School Board.

During a Wednesday writ of mandamus hearing, Prince William County District Court Judge Wenda Travers ruled the school board must release visitor information from Gar-Field High School, Woodbridge High School and Freedom High School from Dec. 3, 2007 to Dec. 7, 2007.

A writ of mandamus is a court ruling ordering court and government officers to correctly perform mandatory duties correctly...

MCPS: Democracy's Dark Lagoon

MCPS staff take note. The Baltimore Sun's Inside Ed reporter Sara Neufeld comments on how a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals case, involving a public employee who leaked information to the press, relates to coverage of public school systems.

Neufeld notes, "This case is interesting to me, since I regularly encounter school system employees who won't talk to me or provide me with information for fear of being disciplined." She quotes from the Court of Appeals decision:

...Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who says society actually needs more government insiders to leak information to reporters, particularly in this time of newspaper cutbacks...

The Baltimore Sun article quotes that in the opinion, Wilkinson wrote that "intense scrutiny of the inner workings of massive public bureaucracies charged with major public responsibilities is in deep trouble," and the judge hoped "the complex and powerful machinery of government [will] not become democracy's dark lagoon."

What's an example of a massive public bureaucracy? The Montgomery County Public School system.

Wanted: MCPS insider's to leak information to the press or blogs. No application required. All information welcome.

Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit

Below is a link to an excellent opinion article in the Washington Post about the value of newspaper reporters in keeping public information PUBLIC.
The exact same article could be written about Montgomery County Public Schools where Maryland Public Information Act requests are ignored or can take at least 30 days for a first response.
The MCPS Board of Education and Superintendent Weast are currently billing themselves to Annapolis Senators, Delegates and the Montgomery County Council as "open, transparent, and accountable". However, procurement information is still a mystery for approximately 700 interactive white boards (may be Promethean boards, but who knows).
The existence of a $3.3 million annual payment, 4 year lease for 2,600 Promethean Boards was only made public 60 days after a Maryland Public Information Act request by a parent.
Absent in Montgomery County, as also noted in the Baltimore article, are reporters able to do any in depth investigative reporting.

In Baltimore, no one left to Press the Police

By David Simon

Sunday, March 1, 2009; Page B01

...desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon....

...And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland's public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection. There are civil penalties for refusing to do so, the judge would assure him. And as chief judge of the District Court, he would declare, I may well invoke said penalties if you go further down this path.
Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.

"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.

"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.

"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."...

Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit -- these are the wages of a world in which newspapers, their staffs eviscerated, no longer battle at the frontiers of public information....

So I tried to explain the Maryland statutes to the shift commander, but so long had it been since a reporter had demanded a public document that he stared at me as if I were an emissary from some lost and utterly alien world.