We missed hearing from you Halo. I missed your ability to spin your opinion into a post when you have no knowledge of what you are writing about. The complaint was criticized for not being "brief and concise" , imagine that. It was faulted for being a rambling narrative alleging misdeeds by a group of people over a period of many months. I realized that they were using the "shot gun" tactic so that a narrative or recitation would be seen as rambling. To identify the HOME TBA program for example; A federally funded housing program ran by the State of Oregon sub-granted to Lane County administered by the Lane County Board of commissioners who sub-contracted the program to Community Sharing Program of Cottage Grove Oregon. The alleged incidents involve members of a not for profit, county government, state government and a private citizen spanning a period of 24 months.

That is rather difficult to put in a brief and concise manner.

Your flippant observation that the county commissioners were vindicated is both sophomoric and misleading. Since the judge was required by law to strike and disregard the narrative I submitted, he had no information to base any factual opinion upon. As I wrote to Liane, my first submission was akin to a shot across the bow. It lets my intentions be known and draws out their defensive strategy.

What is your opinion of the subject that all e-mail using the official lane county e-mail address should be considered public documents and therefore made available on-line for public scrutiny. Might even be funded by the several hundred thousand dollar appropriation made to the county computer department.

Annastacia, do you only support federal laws you like or is there a reason behind your logic.

Woe is you, huh, FT? Same old story.

Somehow the Enron case, based upon over ten-million pages of documents, hundreds of players and billions of dollars, could be distilled into sufficiently concise pleading to meet the standards in federal court, but that can't be done with your imaginary little case? Give us a break.

Once again, you're on a different page from the rest of the world. Every time you try to sell your hogwash to professionals of any kind -- law enforcement, attorney general, DA, media, judges -- you get a dose of reality. And that always precipitates another bout of windy whining here. You have ZERO credibility - and you've earned it the hard way.

If you could just manage your delusions, or capitalize on them, you could get a job writing and move on with your life.

The time you've spent whining here could have earned you enough money so you wouldn't need welfare-housing. You write well, FT. Why not continue writing fiction for a living?

foundation trilogy:

As I wrote to Liane, my first submission was akin to a shot across the bow. It lets my intentions be known and draws out their defensive strategy.

Hahahaha, hahaha...

Hahaha.

F.Lee. Bailey at work...

Nobody files and loses a lawsuit to "fire a shot across their bow".

Determine their strategy? You mean the part where they say, "The claim is meritless and has no basis in law or fact"?

Hahahahaha...

You had a meritless case and got spanked, just as everybody here knew you would. End of story.

You crack me up, FT.


But please, give it a rest.

My sides hurt :)

Halo your tactics are transparent. Your "quote" "The claim is meritless and has no basis in law or fact" does not exist in the court documents. So, prove it, post your source and reference, and include a link to a scanned document. You are calling me a liar on this forum, I say you are making up a statement and putting quote marks around it to make it look believable. 

Now back to actual facts and references that can be verified.
The portion beginning with
Jackson County, Oregon
District Attorney's Office
Mark Huddleston
District Attorney
Is from
www .open-oregon. com /New_Pages/ MedfordCommentRecords .h t m

(spaces added so that my browser will post the link.)
Titled
"Jackson County District Attorney orders school district to release names, responses of residents who commented on health curriculum"

The following was sent to the gang at Lane county Oregon. Tuesday  April 22, 2008
Liane, thank you for your illuminating comments concerning my requests for access to Lane County Oregon Board of Commissioner's public documents, i.e. e-mails to and from their official Lane County e-mail address.
First a legal question. Your response will need to be a name, title, address, phone number and an e-mail address.
Who is the custodian of Lane County Oregon Board of Commissioner's public documents, i.e. e-mails to and from their official Lane County e-mail address with respect to the State of Oregon public records law?
For your edification I am proffering the following:

"Jackson County, Oregon
District Attorney's Office
Mark Huddleston
District Attorney
To: Cathy Noah and Tim Gerking
Fax: 776-4376 772-7249
Subject: public records petition
Date: December 2, 2005
Ms. Noah and Mr. Gerking:
This letter constitutes my order in response to Ms. Noah's public records petition requesting that I review the Medford School District's (District) denial of a public records request made by the Mail Tribune (Tribune) on November 23, 2005. The request was for the release of "the e-mail and written comments on the proposed health curriculum, as well as the names of the people commenting." The District responded on November 29, 2005, agreeing to furnish to the Tribune the written and e-mail comments received by the District. However the District indicated that it would "redact the names and e- mail addresses from the comments, because such information is personal in nature and disclosure of such information would have a chilling effect on the Districts future ability to receive communication from the community on such important and sensitive matters."
There is no question but that the Medford School District is a public body subject to the Oregon Public Records Act. ORS 192.420. "The Public Records Law is primarily a disclosure law, rather than a confidentiality law. Exemptions ...are limited in their nature and scope of application because the general policy of the Jaw favors public access to government records." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.21 (2004) citing Jordan v. MVD, 308 Or 433, 438 (1989). It is also well-settled that when examining any request for a record kept by a public body, the presumption is in favor of disclosure unless there is a clear and overriding reason not to do so. Coos County v. Department of Fish & Wildlife, 86 Or App 168, 173 (1987).
In his letter to me of December 1, 2005, Mr. Gerking indicates that there were 57 e-mails received by the District. The letter indicated that those e-mails were not solicited by the District. However, in a telephone conversation with me on December 2, 2005, Mr.- Gerking advised that he had looked further into the matter and told me that the District had received a total of 67 e-mails on this matter as of December 2nd.
Of the 67 e-mails, 58 were received through a web page that the District had appended to its home page, which had a link to the proposed curriculum, and invited people to send comments to the District about the proposed changes. Mr. Gerking further advised that on November 22nd, that web page was changed to indicate that it was optional for the person sending in comments to identify that person's name and/or e- mail address. Of the 45 comments that were received by the District between November 15 and November 22, 2005, all were identified by name and e-mail address. Of the 13 comments received by the District through that web page after November 22nd, only two people did not leave either a name or an e-mail address. Mr. Gerking also advised that 4 e-mails were sent directly to Superintendent Long, and 5 others came to the District through the home page site for the District. Those 9 e-mails all came with the sender's name and e-mail address identified.
In his December 1st letter, Mr. Gerking cites ORS 192.502(2), the personal privacy exemption, as authority for the District's position. That statutory exemption allows the public body to decline to disclose public records if:
1. the information is of a personal nature;
2. the disclosure of the information would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy; and
3. there is no overriding public interest in disclosure.
Jordan, supra at 440 et. seq. Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.58 et. seq- (2004).
I analyze these three questions below:
1. Are names and e-mail addresses personal in nature?
Personal information "includes all information 'relating to a particular person,' such as a person's home address, age, weight and residential telephone number." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.59 (2004), citing Jordan, supra- I agree with Mr. Gerking's analysis that the names and e-mail addresses of the persons who submitted e-mail comments to the District are "personal" within the meaning of the Oregon Public Records laws.
2. Would the disclosure of such personal information constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy?
The Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual notes that whether disclosure of personal information constitutes an unreasonable invasion of privacy involves an objective test. "An invasion of privacy will be unreasonable where Ian ordinary reasonable person would deem {it} highly offensive." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.60 (2004), citing Jordan, supra at 441. In weighing this factor, the public body may consider how the entity requesting the information will use the information if released. Jordan, supra at 444.
In this case, the Tribune indicated in its November 23, 2005 e-mail to the District that receiving the names and e-mail addresses of the persons submitting comments to the District would allow the Tribune to "gauge the tenor of the comments and see who is involved in the process. We would always contact people independently to verify their comments before publishing them -" From this, it is apparent that the Tribune may choose to attribute by name, specific comments that individuals submitted to the District concerning the proposed revision to the health curriculum.
In determining whether releasing the names and e-mail address in this case would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy, the primary question is whether a reasonable person who submitted an e-mail comment would consider it "highly offensive" to have those comments publicly printed in the Tribune, with an attribution as to the name of the person who submitted the comment. Certainly the people who cared enough about this issue to submit written comments to the District meant what they said and intended that the District consider their input. Anonymous comments are not given nearly the weight as comments coming from an identified constituent. The question then is whether persons submitting comments did so with a reasonable expectation that those comments would not be publicly attributed to them. If such was the expectation, the final question is whether it would be offensive to the reasonable person to have the comments published with the attribution, regardless of the expectations at the time of submission.
While the subject matter in question may be politically and emotionally charged, I doubt that the people who submitted the comments would be unwilling to have the comments published and identified as having coming from them. The situation is not dissimilar to making a comment at a school board meeting. Those comments are public by their very nature, and a reasonable person would not be surprised, or offended, to find those comments quoted in the next day's paper. Absent some assurance on the part of the District that comments submitted on this topic would remain confidential, there is no reason to believe that a reasonable person would have expected that comments submitted might not be used in a public forum of some sort.
I believe it is relevant to this issue to note that of the 13 people who submitted e-mail comments to the District through the redesigned link which allowed them to opt not to list their name or e-mail address, only two did not provide either piece of information.
Accordingly, I find that the District has failed to meet its burden that disclosure of the names and e-mail addresses of persons who submitted comments to the District would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
3. Is there is an overriding public interest in disclosure?
Although my decision noted above decides the issue in favor of the Tribune, I feel that the final test should also be addressed. The District cites the "chilling effect" that disclosure of this information might have on people who in the future may wish to weigh in on matters of concern to the District. I note that the Oregon Public Record Act does contain a provision for public bodies to limit the disclosure of information "submitted to the public body in confidence and not otherwise required by law to be submitted, where such information should reasonably be considered confidential, the public body has obliged itself in good faith not to disclose the information, and when the public interest would suffer by disclosure." ORS 192.502(4). I do not address whether such a procedure could have been utilized by the District in this case to solicit confidential submissions, as a public interest test is still required under this section of the Act. However, the fact that such an approach was potentially available and was not utilized lends further support to the fact that e-mailed comments to the District were not solicited with a reasonable expectation on the part of the District that they were confidential in nature.
I believe there is a strong public interest in disclosure of the names of people who choose to submit comments to a public body. As indicated above, those comments are normally submitted with the intent of influencing the deliberative process that a public body is undertaking. In the case of the District, the decision whether to adopt the proposed curriculum will be made by the school board. Board members are elected by popular vote of the people within the District. Just as voters are entitled to know who is contributing money to a political candidate, so too are people within the District entitled to know who is saying what about this issue. Ordering disclosure in this instance will allow the public, as well as the Tribune, to "gauge the tenor of the comments and see who is involved in the process." I believe that public interest outweighs any chilling effect such disclosure may have.
Accordingly, the Tribune's Petition for disclosure of public records is hereby granted. The District is ordered to make available for inspection by the Tribune the names and e-mail addresses of the persons who submitted e-mail comments to the District regarding the proposed health curriculum. The District has seven days to comply with this order unless during that time period the District Institutes proceedings under ORS 192.450(2) for injunctive or declaratory relief in the Circuit Court for the State of Oregon for Jackson County.
This order is effective December 2, 2005.
Mark Huddleston
District Attorney "

 

Copy of official request.

 

I am requesting all e-mail records for the time beginning Jan. 1 2002 through the present for the Lane County Oregon Board of County Commissioners. These files exist as electronic data and I wish to receive access to them in that form. I request the files be made available in electronic form so that I can review them in a manner that accords me an accommodation for my disability, severe PTSD. An accommodation for my disability to have a hearing conducted by Steve Manela with the Lane County Board of Commissioners was granted and used. This request includes access to those records. An accommodation regarding my PTSD and the HOME TBA was also granted and recognized by the Lane County Board of Commissioners. This request also contains reference to those documents.

I believe that it is cheaper for Lane County Oregon to make these public documents available on a publicly accessible web site, this is in line with the wishes of the Legislature and Governor of the State of Oregon as expressed in the Oregon Public Records Law as codified in ORS 192.410 to 192.505.. This would serve my request for an accommodation for my recognized disability and would serve the greater Lane County public interest by giving the citizens of Lane County Oregon a view of the actual e-mail correspondence concerning the Measure 39 hearings, which involved millions of tax payer dollars. They have a right to see who was influencing their elected officials just the same as they have to watch a web broadcast of public Commissioner meeting currently available on the official Lane County web site. It will also provide openness to the years long Lane County Public Safety funding process, this is of paramount importance to Lane County citizens as it relates to their safety and how the County Commissioners arrived at the funding levels over the years. It will provide public access to how they lobbied the Federal Government and who lobbied them in making their crucial life and death decisions concerning their Public safety and funding of critical public safety and correctional jail funding decisions over the years when funding for Public Safety was being drastically cut by the Lane County Commissioners. I therefore request that these e-mails be made freely available on the Lane County Public accessible web site. Since ALL correspondence by official Lane County E-mail addresses of the County Board of Commissioners is for conducting public business and there is no express notation on the official web site that gives the E-mail contact information an expectation of privacy or secrecy of their correspondence, I submit that the e-mails should be made available to the public in their full and unedited form. The act of review and censoring the data would only lead to mistrust by the public as to the completeness and accuracy of the e-mails in question. I therefore submit that the e-mails be made available in pristine un-edited form.

To summarize: I request public web access to all Lane County Board of Commissioners’ E-mail correspondence for the time period beginning January 1 2002 to the present.

I request that I be granted a continuation of a Lane County recognized accommodation for my PTSD that I be allowed public web site access to the requested data.

Because the e-mails requested are also contain factual material that relates to the life and death issues of the public safety funding and jail funding of Lane County that is of prime concern of it’s citizens, I request a total fee waiver for these documents.

Since the requested e-mail documents originally and now exist as electronic data, I request that they be made in their original un-edited form on the Official Lane County Oregon web site wit full and free access to the public.

Since the completeness and accuracy of these vital public documents is of prime concern to the public I request that the e-mail documents be made available in toto, un-edited and with no prior additions or modifications by anyone.

I am including a web copy of letter from Jackson County, Oregon
District Attorney’s Office
Mark Huddleston
District Attorney

Concerning a matter simular to my request.

Following that is an e-mail I received from

Liane Richardson

Assistant County Counsel, Lane County, Oregon.

In response to the objections raised in that e-mail I humbly submit the following:

The reluctance to providing the requested documents free of charge and on a publicly accessible web site is removed by the above references to disability accommodations and serving the greater good of the citizens of Lane County, Oregon, who have a state recognized right to an open governmental process. The request that Liane Richardson makes for the right to censor and change the public record is moot. The citizens of Lane County Oregon have a right to an un-filtered, un-edited view of how their county conducts the people’s business. As an example, they maintain a web broadcast site that allows people with disabilities to watch the public meetings of the Board of County Commissioners. This affords disabled citizens access to public meeting regardless of their inability to attend in person if their disability prevents them from making a personal appearance. Unless there is a compelling and officially sanctioned reason for denying the citizens of Lane County full open and free access to the process in which the Elected Commissioners made life and death decisions concerning the safety of it’s constituents I pray that my request be made full and the requested e-mails be caused to be posted on the official Lane County web site in a free and publicly accessible manner.

I expect a prompt response from the officially recognized custodian to which these important public documents have been entrusted. I am submitting this request to Liane Richardson

Assistant County Counsel, Lane County, Oregon because he has conveyed to me that I am to have no conversations with Lane County employees except him. I am sending this request by return e-mail to all e-mail recipients that (s)he has felt obliged to include in the e-mail transactions.

Respectfully

 

 

 

"Jackson County District Attorney orders school district to release names, responses of residents who commented on health curriculum"

The following was sent to the gang at Lane county Oregon. Tuesday April 22, 2008

Liane, thank you for your illuminating comments concerning my requests for access to Lane County Oregon Board of Commissioner’s public documents, i.e. e-mails to and from their official Lane County e-mail address.

First a legal question. Your response will need to be a name, title, address, phone number and an e-mail address.

Who is the custodian of Lane County Oregon Board of Commissioner’s public documents, i.e. e-mails to and from their official Lane County e-mail address with respect to the State of Oregon public records law?

For your edification I am proffering the following:

Jackson County, Oregon
District Attorney’s Office
Mark Huddleston
District Attorney

To: Cathy Noah and Tim Gerking
Fax: 776-4376 772-7249
Subject: public records petition
Date: December 2, 2005

Ms. Noah and Mr. Gerking:

This letter constitutes my order in response to Ms. Noah's public records petition requesting that I review the Medford School District's (District) denial of a public records request made by the Mail Tribune (Tribune) on November 23, 2005. The request was for the release of "the e-mail and written comments on the proposed health curriculum, as well as the names of the people commenting." The District responded on November 29, 2005, agreeing to furnish to the Tribune the written and e-mail comments received by the District. However the District indicated that it would "redact the names and e- mail addresses from the comments, because such information is personal in nature and disclosure of such information would have a chilling effect on the Districts future ability to receive communication from the community on such important and sensitive matters."

There is no question but that the Medford School District is a public body subject to the Oregon Public Records Act. ORS 192.420. "The Public Records Law is primarily a disclosure law, rather than a confidentiality law. Exemptions ...are limited in their nature and scope of application because the general policy of the Jaw favors public access to government records." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.21 (2004) citing Jordan v. MVD, 308 Or 433, 438 (1989). It is also well-settled that when examining any request for a record kept by a public body, the presumption is in favor of disclosure unless there is a clear and overriding reason not to do so. Coos County v. Department of Fish & Wildlife, 86 Or App 168, 173 (1987).

In his letter to me of December 1, 2005, Mr. Gerking indicates that there were 57 e-mails received by the District. The letter indicated that those e-mails were not solicited by the District. However, in a telephone conversation with me on December 2, 2005, Mr.- Gerking advised that he had looked further into the matter and told me that the District had received a total of 67 e-mails on this matter as of December 2nd.

Of the 67 e-mails, 58 were received through a web page that the District had appended to its home page, which had a link to the proposed curriculum, and invited people to send comments to the District about the proposed changes. Mr. Gerking further advised that on November 22nd, that web page was changed to indicate that it was optional for the person sending in comments to identify that person's name and/or e- mail address. Of the 45 comments that were received by the District between November 15 and November 22, 2005, all were identified by name and e-mail address. Of the 13 comments received by the District through that web page after November 22nd, only two people did not leave either a name or an e-mail address. Mr. Gerking also advised that 4 e-mails were sent directly to Superintendent Long, and 5 others came to the District through the home page site for the District. Those 9 e-mails all came with the sender's name and e-mail address identified.

In his December 1st letter, Mr. Gerking cites ORS 192.502(2), the personal privacy exemption, as authority for the District's position. That statutory exemption allows the public body to decline to disclose public records if:

1. the information is of a personal nature;
2. the disclosure of the information would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy; and
3. there is no overriding public interest in disclosure.

Jordan, supra at 440 et. seq. Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.58 et. seq- (2004).

I analyze these three questions below:

1. Are names and e-mail addresses personal in nature?

Personal information "includes all information 'relating to a particular person,' such as a person's home address, age, weight and residential telephone number." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.59 (2004), citing Jordan, supra- I agree with Mr. Gerking's analysis that the names and e-mail addresses of the persons who submitted e-mail comments to the District are "personal" within the meaning of the Oregon Public Records laws.

2. Would the disclosure of such personal information constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy?

The Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual notes that whether disclosure of personal information constitutes an unreasonable invasion of privacy involves an objective test. "An invasion of privacy will be unreasonable where Ian ordinary reasonable person would deem {it} highly offensive." Attorney General's Public Records and Meetings Manual, p.60 (2004), citing Jordan, supra at 441. In weighing this factor, the public body may consider how the entity requesting the information will use the information if released. Jordan, supra at 444.

In this case, the Tribune indicated in its November 23, 2005 e-mail to the District that receiving the names and e-mail addresses of the persons submitting comments to the District would allow the Tribune to "gauge the tenor of the comments and see who is involved in the process. We would always contact people independently to verify their comments before publishing them -" From this, it is apparent that the Tribune may choose to attribute by name, specific comments that individuals submitted to the District concerning the proposed revision to the health curriculum.

In determining whether releasing the names and e-mail address in this case would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy, the primary question is whether a reasonable person who submitted an e-mail comment would consider it "highly offensive" to have those comments publicly printed in the Tribune, with an attribution as to the name of the person who submitted the comment. Certainly the people who cared enough about this issue to submit written comments to the District meant what they said and intended that the District consider their input. Anonymous comments are not given nearly the weight as comments coming from an identified constituent. The question then is whether persons submitting comments did so with a reasonable expectation that those comments would not be publicly attributed to them. If such was the expectation, the final question is whether it would be offensive to the reasonable person to have the comments published with the attribution, regardless of the expectations at the time of submission.

While the subject matter in question may be politically and emotionally charged, I doubt that the people who submitted the comments would be unwilling to have the comments published and identified as having coming from them. The situation is not dissimilar to making a comment at a school board meeting. Those comments are public by their very nature, and a reasonable person would not be surprised, or offended, to find those comments quoted in the next day's paper. Absent some assurance on the part of the District that comments submitted on this topic would remain confidential, there is no reason to believe that a reasonable person would have expected that comments submitted might not be used in a public forum of some sort.

I believe it is relevant to this issue to note that of the 13 people who submitted e-mail comments to the District through the redesigned link which allowed them to opt not to list their name or e-mail address, only two did not provide either piece of information.

Accordingly, I find that the District has failed to meet its burden that disclosure of the names and e-mail addresses of persons who submitted comments to the District would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy.

3. Is there is an overriding public interest in disclosure?

Although my decision noted above decides the issue in favor of the Tribune, I feel that the final test should also be addressed. The District cites the "chilling effect" that disclosure of this information might have on people who in the future may wish to weigh in on matters of concern to the District. I note that the Oregon Public Record Act does contain a provision for public bodies to limit the disclosure of information "submitted to the public body in confidence and not otherwise required by law to be submitted, where such information should reasonably be considered confidential, the public body has obliged itself in good faith not to disclose the information, and when the public interest would suffer by disclosure." ORS 192.502(4). I do not address whether such a procedure could have been utilized by the District in this case to solicit confidential submissions, as a public interest test is still required under this section of the Act. However, the fact that such an approach was potentially available and was not utilized lends further support to the fact that e-mailed comments to the District were not solicited with a reasonable expectation on the part of the District that they were confidential in nature.

I believe there is a strong public interest in disclosure of the names of people who choose to submit comments to a public body. As indicated above, those comments are normally submitted with the intent of influencing the deliberative process that a public body is undertaking. In the case of the District, the decision whether to adopt the proposed curriculum will be made by the school board. Board members are elected by popular vote of the people within the District. Just as voters are entitled to know who is contributing money to a political candidate, so too are people within the District entitled to know who is saying what about this issue. Ordering disclosure in this instance will allow the public, as well as the Tribune, to "gauge the tenor of the comments and see who is involved in the process." I believe that public interest outweighs any chilling effect such disclosure may have.

Accordingly, the Tribune's Petition for disclosure of public records is hereby granted. The District is ordered to make available for inspection by the Tribune the names and e-mail addresses of the persons who submitted e-mail comments to the District regarding the proposed health curriculum. The District has seven days to comply with this order unless during that time period the District Institutes proceedings under ORS 192.450(2) for injunctive or declaratory relief in the Circuit Court for the State of Oregon for Jackson County.

This order is effective December 2, 2005.

Mark Huddleston
District Attorney

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Bussey, Lane County is the custodian of the Lane County Board of Commissioner's public documents. You may make any requests to me, as you have threatened litigation against the County. All communications between my client, the County, and you will go through our office as I've stated before. You already have my email address, title, address and phone number. I completely agree with DA Huddleston's position. However, there's an important distinction between the case cited below and the case involving your request which you seem to be ignoring or don't understand. We have not denied your request for information. We have given you an opportunity to inspect the documents that are easily accessible, and have told you there will be a cost of retrieving other documents, reviewing those documents, and photocopying the documents. all of which is allowable under the public records law. We have also informed you that you are mistaken in your belief that Commissioner Green went on the D.C. trip, but have offered to retrieve and review his email as well, if you are willing to pay the cost.

Liane Richardson

Assistant County Counsel

(I am not burdened with a mistaken belief concerning Bobby Green, I wish to see who he was in e-mail contact during this time.

Kyle)

Looks like the county attorney is doing her job. You can get whatever you need, you just have to pay for employee time. That's what the law anticipates/requires.

Your requests are probably expensive because they are incredibly broad. (The government is not required to underwrite fishing expeditions for things that may or may not exist.) Assuming you have proof of the misconduct you've alleged, you could save most of the cost by narrowing your request to the documents at issue.

Great thing about the open document law is that you don’t have to tip them off about what you are seeking to uncover. As to the Time that it would take to make these files available to all the public on the official county web site, can you say "copy and paste". In the future they would automatically be saved to the web site. Liane Richardson has put the word out that no county employee is supposed to talk to me, all my correspondence is to be redirected to her/him. It makes you wonder what they know exists that they are trying to hide. Odd about them getting so adamant about not wanting Bobby Greens emails to be released.

We had an e-mail hearing concerning the Lane County Oregon County Board of Commissioners mishandling of federal housing funds, those files are required to be kept for 7 years. Someone will have had the dubious distinction of ordering those files destroyed. It will take less than 3 seconds to do a global search for words I put into the transcript. So what would I be looking for in these documents? Submitting false invoices to the federal government, creating false documents to cover up a federal crime, destroying public documents in the commission of a federal crime, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, Operating a criminal enterprise, obstruction of justice and providing false testimony to a federal investigator. You will note that these are federal crimes so they will be tried in federal court in a neutral venue. The crimes involve heavy fines, federal prison time and property forfeiture. The statement that started our trip into Lane County politics was made by David Flores when he said, "Just sign the documents, and the county will back date them." The documents the county would be "back dating" were one year leases that were to be paid month by month with federal money. At that exact time the Lane County Commissioners were getting the state to give them more money to cover a shortfall in their Health and Human Services budget. As you will recall Lane County has a proclivity to shuffle money between funds for their own nefarious reasons. The e-mails of this time period will be very illuminating. Any attempts to change, alter or delete these files will be recorded by the computer programs. This type of trying to alter computer files is about as successful as putting whiteout on your computer screen and just as obvious. E-mail is like life, it is a path with many stops creating memories along the way, that is to say the e-mails exist on systems not controlled by Lane County. Any person like Liane that is part of covering up this search for information concerning the violations of federal laws will become ensnared in the same net. Remember Watergate and which people went to prison.

Return-Path: <liane.richardson(at)co.lane.or.us>

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From: "RICHARDSON Liane I" <Liane.RICHARDSON@co.lane.or.us>

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Cc: "RICHARDSON Liane I" <Liane.RICHARDSON@co.lane.or.us>

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FT...

Do you really think that Lane County has 7 years worth of e-mail saved and on-line ready to look at at a moments notice?   Do you have any idea how many e-mails we are talking about and how much disk space this would take up?   Any typical business person that deals with e-mail can tell you that 7 years of e-mails for 1,000+ personnel would drown a business of any kind in too much disk space.

Of course, they don't have easy access to the information.  Sure they have it backed up.  But they STILL have to go and get it from tapes or whatever back-up media they use.  THEN they have to load it, and THEN they have to get it to you in a way that may or may not be reasonable accommodation based on your demands, but is still reasonable accommodation.  This takes time & money (money that everyone knows they don't have), so they have a fee schedule set up for retrieval of information.  It's pure and simple.  You want the information above and beyond what would be considered reasonable or impacts time to get, then you pay for the cost of that retreival. 

Maybe you don't work with computers much or realize the scope of what you are demanding.  I personally would be ticked if someone made the County amass all this data without payment for services rendered.  The County, unless they have huge amounts of data storage just laying around, don't have the capacity to put it out there.  That's why they likely back-up and delete.  When it's needed, which is likely very rare, THEN they can put what is needed back, but only temporary.  They have better things to do with thier data storage.  After your request is paid for and fulfilled, I would imagine that they would remove it again (after all, they have it on back up). Backing the same data everyday is inefficient, that's why businesses keep back-ups.  Back-up and purge.  Keep your business computer footprint down to what you really need. 

It doesn't sound like the County is being unreasonable at all.  This process for data retreival and the fees for doing so have been used for many years.  You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get.

I took a little bit of time to read the full order.  The Court found that the complaint is "a rambling narrative of loosely connected factual allegations about their (Susan Smith and Kyle Bussey's) disputes with various officials . . . in short, it is impossible to determine which individuals named in the complaint plaintiffs are seeking to hold liable for the alleged conduct or what conduct is alleged to be the basis for plaintiffs' claims.  Based on the foregoing, plaintiffs' complaint is dismissed for failure to state a claim.  Plaintiffs may file an amended pleading, curing the deficiencies noted above, within 30 days of the date of this order (March 5, 2008).  Plaintiffs are advised that failure to file an amended complaint curing the deficiences noted herein will result in the dismissal of this action with prejudice."  On April 16, 2008, the Court entered a dismissal because the plaintiffs had not filed anything.  It was dismissed for failure to prosecute and failure to comply with a court order.

That means FT can't file again in federal court regarding the issues he tried to raise this last time around.   Maybe the County employees can actually get back to doing work for the taxpayers of the County now.

Triwanda,

Thanks for the info.  Is it available for viewing someplace on-line?  I would love to read it through (after skipping all of the drivel that FT put on it).

Interesting that FT was all up and going about the lawsuit, yet when it got dismissed back on March 5th, FT didn't offer any information on the status.  Of course, he never responded to queries here, nor did he file an amended complaint.  Then it got dismissed completely on April 16th.

So, in FT true style and pattern, he went off in a different direction (a mis-direction) and jumped on the E-Mail bandwagon to attempt to confused and deflect the truth from himself.

Once the results of the dismissal were discovered and posted here, he went back to his roots and started doing mass copying and pasting to flood the forum here with information in an attempt to make his conspiracy theories sound important.  After all, these were words from official documents and from the Internet.  They MUST be true and point out all along what FT has been saying about the crooks and deceivers down at the County.

The pattern continues..... 

I would have said last month that the chances of anything coming of his lawsuit are about as good as snow in April!!  But even THAT has a better chance, evidently.

 

FT: "Great thing about the open document law is that you don’t have to tip them off about what you are seeking to uncover".

Do you really think they have no idea that you'l take any sentence from an E-Mail and take it out of context and make it support your theories?  If you DO ever get an E-Mail and post it here, I would defnintely recommend that you post it in complete form (do I ever doubt that you'll copy and paste as much as you can, anyway?).  That way you can't be accused (heaven forbid) of being like those that you accuse....

You can view all of the documents for any federal case on-line.  You need to register for a public access . . . something.  It's called PACER.  Here's the link.  http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/   There is no cost to register, but there's a minimal charge to view documents (.08 a page I think).   There's instructions there on how to look up cases.  Knowing FT's real name is helpful, because if you type in Bussey as the last and Kyle as the first, it takes you right to any of his pending lawsuits.  I think this was the only one currently in federal court.  You can then run a docket report, which gives you a summary of everything that's happened.  If you click on the document number, it opens that document and then you can read, print off or save the document itself.  It took awhile to figure it all out, but it's very helpful. 

I'm guessing that FT wished that Lane County email system had the same computer system to look up the emails. 

Yeah, too bad Lane County isn't funded like the federal courts are . . .

Buzz that would be a good system for Lane County, Oregon to emulate.

A few minor points to clear up.

The last correspondence contains the Magistrate Judges "recommendation" that goes to a real Federal Judge. A Magistrate Judge is sort of like the proofreader for the Federal Judge that makes sure things are correct as to form and style. A Magistrate Judge does not have the ability to rule without the consent of the parties, they send you a paper to that effect. A magistrate Judge is not a federal judge appointed by the President of the US. He is like Andy Taylor on the "Andy Griffith Show" in the 60’s, appointed by a Federal Judge, a local Judge that does preliminary bureaucratic paperwork. In this situation I was asking the court to appoint an attorney to represent us in a convoluted case involving local politicians and "grant concubines", Concubine refers to the state of a woman in an ongoing, quasi-matrimonial relationship with a man of higher social status.

The appointment of representation is part of the federal law in this case. The proofreading by the Magistrate Judge or his intern clerk revealed that my description of the incident was "rambling" and that I had failed to include "compelling reasons" for an attorney to be appointed. Since the initial complaint was not signed, the Magistrate Judge is compelled to strike the document according to the federal rules he cited. But a case number has been generated, that poses an enigma. Paperwork demands that the case number be cleared even though there is no complaint, it only contains a request to proceed without paying fees, which was granted, and to have an attorney appointed, which was part of the stricken paperwork.

I now am drafting a letter seeking clarifications from the Magistrate Judge on his recommendations and to whom to address my request for an appointed attorney in this matter.

I will use your comments from this forum as exemplars of why I would be unsuitable to represent myself in this matter when it comes before a real Federal Judge in Federal District Court.

The court clerk informed me that even though it wasn’t stated on the "recommendation", I have until April 28 to add information concerning the case and the "recommendations" by the Magistrate Judge.

Magistrates do have the authority to decide cases in federal court. In fact, most cases are routed to magistrates. Also, the judge indicated that there is no right for court appointed attorney and denied the request.