I love to read sewing blogs. They inspire me to get creative. I especially enjoy the blogs which offer tutorials. That got me thinking about what I could do on this blog. Thinking back to a comment posted here on 5/26/13:
Why not do a tutorial on how to file a Right To Know? I never took the time to file a RTK on the budget, so I will try to go through the steps here.
, notice how the 2013-14 Budget is not posted as of June 5, 2013. To file a RTK with the School District, click on
on the left sidebar of the School District website. Then click on
located in the task bar.
Mt. Lebanon School District
I email my requests to Mrs. Szalinski at
. Here is
that I made when Chip Dalesandro came to my door to say that the YSA had paid all Joint Maintenance Agreement fees in full.
The process is the same for the Municipality. Their form is listed
. I email my RTK requests to our manager, Steve Feller at
.
I always request the medium and format to be email and PDF. I avoid printing costs this way. Occasionally, both local governments have charged me for printing fees for large files. It can get pricey at 25 cents per page.
Boy, was that a boring tutorial. I think I will stick to sewing blogs for inspiration. I hope I took some of the mysticism out of the Right To Know process. Don't be intimidated to file a RTK. It is our right to know!
.
That is when I decided to start lebocitizens.com. I vowed to put all the RTK requests that the District denied online. As soon as I made that clear in Citizens Comments, his threat, I mean suggestion, went away.
Why go after Dan Remely, when I can also show what Mary Birks, Timmy, Tom Peterson, and Josephine Posti have to say about Right To Know requests? And yes, Mary Birks did say Mrs. Lewinsky.
To:
jschnee@state.pa.us
CC:
schoolboardemaillist@mtlsd.net;
tpeterson@tuckerlaw.com;
tsteinhauer@mtlsd.net
Subject: Docket AP 2010-0761
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:29:13 +0000
Mr. Schnee,
Please acknowledge receipt of this e-mail message.
I am a
Mt. Lebanon resident interested in government affairs and have
no formal law training. The
Mt. Lebanon School District, herein after
referred to as the District, is using all legal resources at its
disposal to keep me from inspecting public documents.
On 11-AUG-2010, I requested an e-mail pdf scan of a blank form document.
On 18-AUG-2010, I was informed by means of a scanned pdf document,
my request was granted, yet I was not provided the open record I requested.
On 19-AUG-2010 at 8:05AM EDT, I appeared at the Open Records office to
personally inspect the Open Records. The staff did not show up for work on
time and the same documents the Open Records officer informed me the day
before were available, were not available for me to inspect when I paid
the District a personal visit.
A resident need not to notify an agency in advance of public inspection during
normal business hours the day after being notified the Open Records
are available for inspection. This fact should be intuitively obvious
to the casual observer, but the District solicitor failed to recognize it.
On 34-AUG-2010, I e-mailed the solicitor advance notice that I would be
attending the Open Meeting, see attached notice.pdf document.
On 25-AUG-2010 during an open meeting, I asked the District if I could
inspect the Open Records made available for me on 18-AUG-2010.
The solicitor told me they were not available. Please note Open Meetings are
held one floor above the District offices and the documents could have
been given to me after the meeting if the District were not vigorously
protecting its position of prohibiting access to Open Records.
In an e-mail dated 26-AUG-2010, Mr. Peterson wrote I demanded, "again
without prior notice" to review the records.
If you review the meeting recording I sent last week, you will find
I asked politely without demanding.
Also, I did indeed provide one day prior advance notice of my attendance at
the 25-AUG-2010 Open Meeting, and I included Mr. Peterson as a recipient of my notice.
The District has not mailed me any documents pertaining to this request,
even though I wrote my address on the RTK form 11-AUG-2010 and publicly
stated my street address on 25-AUG-2010.
The District has not provided me the documents I requested in electronic
format even after I appealed to the Office of Open Records and asked
for the documents in a public forum.
The District's own policy KDB, attached, states the "public records of the
District shall be made available for inspection and copying in
accordance with applicable Federal and State law and the procedures
set forth herein."
The District contends my appeal is frivolous resulting in unneccessary expense.
The fact is, if the district complied with my request initially,
I would not have appealed and there would be no unneccessary expense.
I have also attached five (5) audio clips from Open Meetings, with
links to the entire meetings, the transcribed text and comment below:
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/6/21_School_Board_Business_Meeting.html
2010-06-21A:
Director Mary Birks:
Individuals who request reams of information, and yet, don't even take the time to come in and view those things, umm, which takes a lot of time from Mrs. Lewinsky uh a lot of time from some of our other folks. Takes them away from
their jobs here in the district, so they are helping kids to get an education rather
than copy paper that might not ever be looked at.
Comment:
The District is concerned about residents who do not inspect records after requesting them, yet denies access of records to residents who do indeed appear to inspect them. Director Birks contends non-certified office staff are educating children.
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/6/21_School_Board_Business_Meeting.html
2010-06-21B:
Director Dan Remely:
But I do have an objection to frivolous requests, to request to copy hundreds and
hundreds of pages and not have the courtesy or the respect to pick them up or to pay for them. That's part of the law. I have no concern about anything that that is out there in public, it's there everyday, it's on TV every week. I have a major concern for people who think it's just fun to run the costs up for the school district.
In my opinion, if we are going to post the right to know requests, especially now
that we have the, uh, we've already spent the money to put in the technical side
to keep our costs down. I would like to see the actual cost, legal, copying and
otherwise of each request, posted with that request, and uh, and then, I'd also
like to be noted that if things are copied on their behalf,
were they picked up or not?
Comment:
Director Remely contends resident requests for Open Records are frivolous and wishes to publicly intimidate residents from making Open Records requests.
He noted the District should inform the public whether or not a resident picks
up requested open records, but does not care if hired staff perform their
work function providing open records to residents who have previously requested them.
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_1.html
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_2.html
2010-07-12A:
Superintendent Steinhauer:
Things that we have implemented, prior to making all the copies without the parties picking them up, is, informing them of the cost, and asking them of their intent, of whether to pick those up, so we are trying to be a little bit more careful about making copies prior to people coming in to pick
them up but we'd certainly whatever the board is decision and what they'd like to
post uh you know we'd like to comply with well if you feel like you've eliminated that issue Superintendent Steinhauer: well you never know
Director Josephine Posti: yeah
Superintendent Steinhauer: sometimes people say yes they will come get it, and then they ultimately don't come and get, we've made the copies and they ultimately don't come and get them.
Director Mary Birks:
Ok, well there there's the other, the other situation where the information is
gathered and the individual is going to come in and go over them, and then doesn't.
And it's the time that Mrs. Szalinski spends gathering the information and I think
that's what Mrs. Posti is saying you know, if we are going to put this kind of money, it's taxpayer money, that we are spending on these requests. And if we, if we're doing that, we need to make sure that people know if they're just doing it to make people busy, or if they're actually doing something to find out information that's helpful.
Director Dan Remely:
Umm, I had suggested last week that we put the price on, and so forth; and I'm still firmly behind that, and in fact, if if uh we can advise one of the cost of copies, I would request the check up front, before we make the first copy.
I am not in a position to spend taxpayer's dollars on somebody's frivolous request.
If they want ten thousand pages copied, you pay for ten thousand pages.
If you don't pick them up, I don't care.
Director Josephine Posti:
Can we do that, though, under the way the law reads?
Solicitor Tom Peterson:
One hundre, hundred dollars.
Director Josephine Posti:
We can ask for pre-payment?
Solicitor Tom Peterson:
If it's a hundred dollars or more, you can ask for pre-payment.
Director Josephine Posti:
Ok, ok.
Director Dan Remely:
Umm, and I also think that we ought to, after posting the right to knows, which
are fine, you know everybody's allowed to do that, umm, the cost of it, and in some cases or all cases, an ongoing cost. So if someone's got a right to know bi-weekly, and every other week it's another thousand dollars, start adding it up.
Let the public know what they're requesting. It may be legitimate, that's fine;
but let 'em know what they're requesting, and let them know what the total costs are over the year. Um, it's just, uh, some of the requests we get are absurd, and
expensive for us to comply with, and then ignored, and I think that's just obnoxious to, to have to go through that. It's terrible, so, and a huge waste of money.
Comment:
This discussion underscores the fact that the District is not concerned about
the right of residents to request and receive Open Records.
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_1.html
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_2.html
2010-07-12B:
Superintendent Steinhauer:
Sometimes we get requests to uh, scan documents and then e-mail them to people, umm, and under the statute, umm, they are able to get information that way.
But then, there that is a cost of umm the administrative assistant or anybody else who is involved in gathering those documents. Remember that the right to know does not require us to develop documents, it just requires us to provide the information that is currently on a document, or uh, something that we have already have made that
doesn't require us to make those documents make a spreadsheet or anything like that.
We can provide the information from where somebody else can make that spreadsheet.
Comment:
Dr. Steinhauer stated the District provides residents Open Records in scanned pdf format via e-mail. He also said the District does not perform additional manual data entry tasks to satisfy a request.
My request was for electronic scanned documents and would have required the same, or even less work than paper documents.
As a course of business, the District routinely scans paper documents
and e-mails the pdf facsimile of same. In fact, this very action was performed
when Ms. Szalinski replied to inform me the Open Records I requested would be available. This same scanning activity would have satisfied my original request if the District performed the scan of the Open Records I requested.
The District chose to create an undue hardship on me by delaying and denying
Open Records that the same agency admitted I am entitled to have.
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_1.html
http://www.lebocitizens.com/Lebo_Citizens/Podcast/Entries/2010/7/12_School_Board_Discussion_Meeting%2C_Part_2.html
2010-07-12C:
Superintendent Steinhauer:
Anybody requesting this a right to know, well, they really don't even need to do that, because we pretty much post every document that we own and have on our website.
Comment:
The District is wasting my time because the Open Records I requested should be on the website.
