After doing the math...

Remember this post, Mt. Lebanon aims for financial transparency ? Trying to get the Statements of Financial Interests from the Municipality has been quite an ordeal. A long and tedious email exchange with Bonnie Cross, Dave Brumfield, and Keith McGill followed. Click the link to read the email exchange - reading the BS from Dave Brumfield indicates that he doesn't read emails. I listed why the volume of RTKs have increased.

After doing the math,

I heard back from Manager McGill:

From: Keith Mcgill <kmcgill@mtlebanon.org>
To: egillen476 <egillen476@aol.com>
Cc: Bonnie Cross <bcross@mtlebanon.org>
Sent: Sat, May 21, 2016 11:42 am
Subject: Re: RTK spam

Elaine,

There are 82 pages total minus 5 pages that you have received electronically for a total of 77 pages. The cost would be $19.25.

Keith

On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 4:02 AM, egillen476@aol.com <egillen476@aol.com> wrote:

Keith,

You may remember the spam and duplications that I was charged 25¢ a copy in a RTK from January 2016.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9r_1biKte_bWmlYYzVSUG03ejA/view?usp=sharing

That resulted in Andrew McCreery issuing me a refund check - I'm guessing it was around $5.00. 

All that added work could have been avoided had Bonnie checked the copies, rather than relying on the copier to count the copies. 

Even the seventeen pages that are sitting in front of Judge O'Brien contained a blank page. He remarked about that at the judicial review. That blank page breaks down to costing me $235.29 in legal fees. How much is that blank page costing the municipality? 

Please end Bonnie's foolishness. Please give me an exact count of pages so that I know how much those public statements of financial interests will cost me in the end. Had these documents been scanned from the start, as they should have been, or you permitting me to copy them using my equipment as the OOR and Ethics Commission state on their websites, we would have been done with this matter by now. 

Elaine

-- 

Keith McGill, AICP
Municipal Manager
412-343-3684
kmcgill@mtlebanon.org 

To which I replied:

From: egillen476 <egillen476@aol.com>
To: kmcgill <kmcgill@mtlebanon.org>
Cc: bcross <bcross@mtlebanon.org>; repmiller <repmiller@pahouse.net>; commission <commission@mtlebanon.org>; nick; david
Sent: Sat, May 21, 2016 12:33 pm
Subject: Re: RTK spam

Boy, that was easy. Thank you, Keith. 

I will bite the bullet and PAY for those public statements of financial interests, which technically should be available for us to copy for free. I will scan them and put them on my blog, so that David, Nick and any others don't have to be charged for the same information. What a racket you guys have going.

I will be bringing this up to the executive director of the Office of Open Records at Rep. Miller's Right To Know Information Session scheduled for September. I hope you all are planning to attend. You need it the most.

This is criminal.

Elaine Gillen

As of May 25, 2016 at 7:07 AM, I have not heard back from Bonnie Cross as to when my copies will be ready. Still more to follow.