The Llano Ledger
Newsletter Text V68
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Publisher's Note: Posting of the December 4, 2000 Newsletter has begun
early. Be sure to read the current November 27, 2000 edition on
Newsletter Text V67. To conserve space, the Lawson Deposition is
continued in The Llano Ledger 2 and can be found by clicking
http://maxpages.com/llanoledger2. In a few weeks, all future editions
will be posted on the second website. This website will continue to be
used for Newsbriefs, Reader Letters, Information And Services, etc.,
until it is completely full. In addition, all material will remain
permanently posted for reader reference and convenience. T.C. December
1, 2000.
*************December 4, 2000*************
The following e-mail was sent to the General Services Commission November 27, 2000:
Hadassah Schloss
Open Records Administrator
General Services Commission
Austin, Tx.
Re: LISD Superintendent
November 27, 2000
Dear Ms. Schloss:
Have you received a response from LISD Superintendent Jack Patton to your letter of October 18, 2000?
Have you sent as promised a letter to the Llano County
Commissioners' Court advising them of the need to follow GSC guidelines
regarding copying fees in all County offices with 3 exceptions?
While the County Judge has agreed to follow your guidelines in his
office, he has asserted Commisssioners' Court action is required to
change fees in other County offices governed by the GSC.
To keep you apprised of continuing serious problems within the
"Open" Records Division, a recent message has been enclosed for your
review.
Sincerely,
Tim Chorney, Publisher
The Llano Ledger
http://maxpages.com/llanoledger
Rt 2 Box 464A
Buchanan Dam, Tx. 78609
The following message was received November 28 in response:
I'm sorry, I just returned from a much needed rest and have tons of mail.
On October 20 I received a letter from Ms. Cheryll Mabray to inform
me that the Llano County Commissioners' Court had asked her to write to
me regarding my letter of October 16. According to Ms. Mabray's letter
"the fee schedule you (I) referred to has been adjusted to reflect
allowable charges." (A copy of her letter is being sent by regular
mail)
The GSC charges apply to all County offices except the County
Clerk, the County Treasurer, and the District Clerk. I expect that all
Llano County offices are aware of this by now. I do not have the
authority to write to every office and verify that they are indeed
using the allowable charges. I feel that I have taken care of the
complaint you sent me, which related to the County Judge and the County
Commissioner's Court. If any other county office in Llano County has
overcharged you, please submit a complaint for each one of those
offices. You may submit one complaint naming all the offices against
which you are complaining. Please include a contact name and address
for each office.
As for the Llano ISD., I have put a copy of the District's answer on
[in] the mail for you. It had been attached to your other complaint, I
apologize for the inconvenience. I will send a response to the
Superintendent by the end of this week. Please note that Mr. Patton
states that you have not availed yourself of the opportunity he gave
you to inspect the records. By law, "Inspection" is to be provided at
the governmental body's premises and during regular business hours. The
Act does not require a governmental body to provide a requestor with
"copies" of records to "inspect" except when dealing with records that
contain mixed information on the same page (confidential and
non-confidential). Even in such an event, the "inspection" of the
redacted copies is to be carried out at the governmental body's
offices, and the requestor must pay for every page on which information
had to be deleted. Such payment must be made before inspection.
For example:
** If you wish to inspect 2000 pages and every single page must be
redacted, the District is authorized to charge you $200 before you
inspect the pages. If of these pages, 200 of them are older than 5
years, and it took the district more than 5 hours to prepare them for
inspection (i.e. locate, and compile), they can charge you for the
personnel time associated with those 200 pages.
** If after inspecting the 2000 pages, you decide that you want to
take them, the district is allowed to charge you for the entire amount
of time spent in locating, compiling, and reproducing the information.
I have no authority to tell any governmental body how long a specific
task should take or how they must accomplish that task. Additionally, I
have no authority to determine whether or not the charges were
calculated in good faith.
Furthermore, I suggest that whenever you request records from any
governmental body, you respond to any correspondence that the
governmental body sends you. The law states that if you don't respond
in the specified time, your request may be considered withdrawn. In the
event that you decide to put a complaint with GSC, I feel that advising
the governmental body of your complaint may help keep your request
alive. This is not in the law, but trying doesn't hurt. However,
whatever you decide, responding to the governmental body's
correspondence is a must. Section 552.2615 put new responsibilities on
the governmental bodies as well as the requestor, and both must comply
with them.
Finally, I remind you that I am just one person. I ask that you limit
your correspondence to complaints of overcharges. I know that you are
frustrated, but there is nothing I can do when a governmental body
refuses to allow you access to records or limits the amount of time
that you can have to inspect the records.
*************************************
The following e-mail was immediately sent in response:
Hadassah Schloss
Open Records Administrator
General Services Commission
Austin, Tx.
November 28, 2000
Ms. Schloss:
I have received absolutely no correspondence from Jack Patton other
than the material I have already sent you. Patton did not, and has not,
ever offered access to the material requested. He has NEVER provided an
opportunity to inspect the records. NEVER. Copies have NEVER, EVER,
been requested from the Superintendent. Only access to the records. I
have responded to ALL correspondence Patton has sent. ALL of it.
If he suggests or claims otherwise, he is a liar. Most pointedly,
he has successfully to date avoided providing access to requested
records going back to last spring. Why? Because the Open Records
Division and the General Services Commission have brazenly allowed him
to disregard the Public Information Act.
Equally pointedly, why in hell are the taxpayers funding two state
agencies that refuse to enforce the law? If you do not have the
authority to enforce the statutes, who at your agency does? If your
agency has no enforcement authority, how does the GSC enforce its
guidelines?
What is happening here, Ms. Schloss, is a Catch-22. ... With two
state agencies refusing to enforce the Public Information Act. Why have
an Act if no one has the authority or willingness to enforce it? Our
apparently corrupt and abusive County Attorney and District Attorney
have no interest and only protect their own.
Why should any material requested need to be redacted? If Patton so
claims, it is to protect those involved in highly questionable activity
deserving an independent, outside criminal investigation.
I look forward to whatever you send in the mail and will respond appropriately.
Tim Chorney, Publisher
The Llano Ledger
http://maxpages.com/llanoledger
Rt 2 Box 464A
Buchanan Dam, Tx. 78609
cc: Llano Ledger website
cc by e-mail: State Sen. Troy Fraser; Katherine Minter Cary,
Interim Chief, Open Records Division; June B. Harden, Assistant
Attorney General, Open Records Division; David Mendoza, Legal
Assistant, Open Records Division; David Short, Investigator, Open
Records Division; John Cornyn, Attorney General, State of Texas; Jack
Patton, Superintendent of Schools, LISD.
****************************************
The following two letters were received from the General Services Commission November 29, 2000:
Cheryll Mabray
County Attorney
Llano County, Texas
October 20, 2000
Ms. Hadassah Schloss
General Services Commission
PO Box 13047
Austin, Texas 78711-3047
Dear Ms. Schloss,
The Llano County Commissioner's Court asked that I write you to let
you know they received your October 16, 2000, letter. The fee schedule
you referred to has been adjusted to reflect allowable charges.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
Cheryll Mabray
Llano County Attorney
CM/dh
cc:
Llano County Judge
County Commissioners:
W.L. "Bill" Kinney
Keith Faulkner
Duane Stueven
Leon Tucker
***************************************
Llano Independent School District
200 East Lampasas
Llano, Texas 78643
October 27, 2000
Ms. Hadassah Schloss
Open Records Administrator
Office of General Counsel
General Services Commission
P.O. Box 13047
Austin, Texas 78711-3047
Dear Ms. Schloss:
I have received your letter dated October 18, 2000. We have not
provided you copies of Mr. Chorney's responses because we have not
received any from him. He prefers to communicate with the Attorney
General's Office and the General Services Commission. I could assume
that he has posted his responses on his web site, which he refers to as
"The Llano Ledger", but that would not constitute a response received
by our office.
Our School District has provided many public documents to Mr. Chorney
through the years. We have never denied him "access" to records. In
fact, Mr. Chorney never came by to inspect the documents that he
requested to see.
You have asked that we "prove" that certain records requested by
Mr. Chorney are over 5 years old. The law does not require us to do so.
The documents speak for themselves, as they say, because it is evident
from their face how old they are.
We have certainly cooperated with you, as well as with our citizens'
requests for public information. We will certainly improve our ability
to respond to such requests in the future based upon your advice.
However, you must understand that we have a school district to run and
this is not the only matter begging our attention.
In your correspondence to County Attorney Cheryll Mabray dated July
25th, 2000, you stated that your "office has no authority to impose
penalties for ... failure to release the records at the charges
established by the General Services Commission; and not being a court
of law, [you] also have no jurisdiction to determine whether the
charges were set using good faith."
Mr. Chorney has already admitted that our charges of 10 cents a
page are reasonable. He has failed to respond to our estimates or
review the documents he requested access to see. In addition, on page
three of your letter dated October 1, 2000, you stated to provide a log
of how 200 hours of research "would be spent". In our letter on
September 11, 2000, to you we noted only 4.86 hours of research which
is in guidelines to the Texas Administrative Code 111.63. I do not know
or understand your reference to this "so called" 200 hours of research
documentation you requested.
We appreciate your input on this matter and have informed our attorney of your interest.
Sincerely,
Jack Patton
Superintendent
JP:gs
cc:
Susan G. Morrison
School Attorney
*****************************************
The following e-mail was sent in response to the General Services Commission, November 30, 2000:
Hadassah Schloss
Open Records Administrator
General Services Commission
Austin, Tx.
Re: LISD Superintendent
November 30, 2000
Dear Ms. Schloss:
In response to Mr. Patton's letter of October 27, 2000, finally
received November 29, kindly be advised it is a remarkably well-written
work of fiction, cleverly designed to distort reality and obfuscate the
truth.
The Superintendent falsely claims: "We have not provided you copies
of Mr. Chorney's responses because we have not received any from him."
Sadly, Mr. Patton is a liar. A scathing letter dated June 1, 2000 was
sent in response to his correspondence of May 30, 2000 and April 28,
2000. In those two letters, he brazenly and unethically attempted to
charge for copies and research never requested. Your office is in
possession of all this correspondence. Should you have misplaced them,
additional copies will be furnished.
Patton further falsely claims: "Our School District has provided many
public documents to Mr. Chorney through the years." Not only is this
statement untrue, it is nonsense. This publication has only been in
existence one year and eight months. He further ludicrously claims: "We
have never denied him "access" to records." If true, why hasn't he
honored the Open Records Request dated May 25, 2000, currently the
issue in dispute?
His next assertion is not only nonsense, but a bald-faced lie: "In
fact, Mr. Chorney never came by to inspect the documents that he
requested to see." Bluntly, Patton is a liar. "Access" was NEVER
granted. The May 25, 2000 Open Records Request has NEVER been honored
by the Superintendent.
Regarding the same precise issue, Patton again falsely claims: "He
has failed to respond to our estimates or review the documents he
requested access to see." Once again, the Superintendent is a liar.
Sadly, his statement is outrageously untrue, -- and he knows it.
Documentation already furnished to your office proves his statement to
be false.
Mr. Patton clearly espouses the clever philosophy: "If you can't
dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with BS. Pitifully, this inept
and bumbling bureaucrat has egregiously failed on both counts. The
truth is still the truth. No amount of distortion changes it.
Outrageous financial irregularities lie at the heart of the
stonewalled Open Records Request of May 25, 2000. Patton's egregious
obfuscation is apparently a desperate attempt to protect his cronies
and other officials from exposure.
The Texas Public Information Act means nothing if the Open Records
Division and General Services Commission are unwilling or unable to
enforce it. Sadly, our apparently corrupt and abusive County Attorney
and District Attorney have no interest and protect their own. Worse
yet, taxpayers are being looted to fund two state agencies impotent in
the face of inept bureaucrats outrageously stonewalling the release of
public information.
Having received the County Attorney's letter of October 20, 2000 on
November 29, this publication is pleased to find the Commissioners'
Court has finally adjusted the fee schedule to reflect allowable
charges for copies of public documents.
Sincerely,
Tim Chorney, Publisher
The Llano Ledger
http://maxpages.com/llanoledger
Rt 2 Box 464A
Buchanan Dam, Tx. 78609
cc: Llano Ledger website
cc by e-mail: State Sen. Troy Fraser; Katherine Minter Cary,
Interim Division Chief, Open Records Division; June B. Harden,
Assistant Attorney General, Open Records Division; David Mendoza, Legal
Assistant, Open Records Division; David Short, Investigator, Open
Records Division; John Cornyn, Attorney General, State of Texas; Jack
Patton, Superintendent, LISD.
************************************************
As strongly asserted in Special Edition V65, the clock is indeed
ticking... The visitor count stands in excess of 42,700, -- another
excellent week and true testament to the shameless willingness of the
readership to "steal" this writer's labor. Certainly, you ought to be
proud of yourselves. Nothing quite like "character", is there? Readers
are advised this writer receives no renumeration from the banner and
pop-up advertising. They only pay for the website itself. There is no
personal compensation, nor are there desperately needed funds for
investigative expenses. Non-profit and outrageously unfunded by the
readership it serves due to greed, gut-wrenching fear, and the
continuing relentless intimidation of corrupt and abusive Llano County
officials, this publication remains as always beholden to NO ONE.
Tim Chorney, Publisher
The Llano Ledger
Tim Chorney, Publisher
P.O. Box 997
Buchanan Dam Tx. 78609
llanoledger@mailcity.com
Page Updated Tue Oct 9, 2001 12:51pm EDT