Tom Wagner charging $1,200 to see his schedule
What do you do if you are a lazy do-nothing auditor who has been sucking on the government teet for 25 years, and someone asks to see your schedule? You try to wrap yourself in an expensive FOIA estimate and hope the request goes away. That was Wagner’s plan when Brenda Mayrack asked to see his schedule to check up on why his office has been chronically understaffed.
From Mayracks FB page:
Check the facts: The State Auditor’s office is critically understaffed, with about 10 budgeted positions sitting open. Almost 40 percent of a staff that should be watching our tax dollars … isn’t there. Tom Wagner said in debate that he turns back “close to a million dollars a year in salary dollars because I can’t fill the positions.” Why not? If uncompetitive salaries are the problem, he has been in position for 25 years to keep pace with changing times. It hasn’t worked.
* Wagner during the debate on WDEL: “I had 57 people when I took office. I’m down to less than 20 right now. I have the budgetary people. I have the salary dollars. I turn back close to a million dollars a year in salary dollars because I can’t fill the positions, because my salaries are uncompetitive to hire people.”
* Is the State Auditor’s Office attending local job fairs? After not seeing the office on the list of attendees at a University of Delaware job fair for accounting students, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the State Auditor’s schedule: “For the year 2014, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events.” The response from his office: “In order to construct information in response to request below and based what we have available in the Office, I estimate it will run approximately $1,191.” And that’s the cost for sending it by email so we didn’t incur any copying or mailing fees.
It’s expensive to check the facts with the State Auditor.
That’s outrageous. Wagner’s office is understaffed and because he is too lazy to go out and recruit candidates for jobs, and now the embarrassed “auditor” tries to charge $1,200 to keep his laziness covered up. Pitiful.
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FOIA is for existing documents. FOIA does not require officials to “construct” documents that do not exist. Now, if he was required to have been keeping this information and he didn’t, that is another issue.
I could generate my work schedule for the past year in about 15 minutes.
And you do 1,000 times more work, so his should take .0015 minutes to produce.
And you probably exposed more waste and corruption than Tom Wagner.
Isn’t 15 minutes divided by 1,000 .015 minutes?
perhaps.
As discussed in their WDEL debate, Mayrack says she hasn’t gotten her FOIA returned and Wagner tells her they always respond to FOIA but it has to go through their deputy AG (true) and he thinks it should be coming in a week or so. No mention of the price tag so that must have come later.
So, we are to believe that no one in his office controls a simple calendar from which one could extract “For the year 2014, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events.” taking less than one hour?
He’s hoping the time runs out before the sand in his electoral hourglass runs out. Gonna be close.
What kind of idiot brags that he turns back “close to a million dollars a year in salary dollars because I can’t fill the positions.” Then says he should be rehired because he does such a great job.
I guess the question is, what kind of idiot votes for that kind of idiot.
The Chipster could have made the same money-saving argument:
Rather than the dubious “making millions for Delaware,” he could have said “I never even tried to replace my disgraced former deputy, even if it meant having no one around to run the office.”
“he thinks it should be coming in a week or so.”
Wouldn’t “a week or so” be after the election?
@nancy
So, we are to believe that no one in his office controls a simple calendar from which one could extract “For the year 2014, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events.” taking less than one hour?
While I agree with you on ethical grounds, that’s not how FOIA works. I’ve been through this with DSU and other organizations for years. FOIA cannot be used to require the respondent to “extract” anything. You can only FOIA entire documents. And therefore what officials often do is claim every single document that is responsive to the request in order to run up the price. Nothing in FOIA actually requires them to exercise any judgment on fulfilling the request.
Thus, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events can (and will) be construed as EVERY conceivable document relating to invitations and preparations for any public appearance and meeting over a 12-month period, even if most of them are ephemera or duplicate each other. I have seen a similar request answered with two to three boxes of documents, intentionally running up the cost for the requestor.
Violating the spirit of the law is a bullshit way for a public official to conduct business.
@jason
That may be true (probably is) but it is also the way that virtually EVERY respondent to FOIA requests in Delaware treats them. Either send the bare absolute minimum or overwhelm people with documents they can’t afford to pay for.
Another cute tactic is asking that you FOIA requests for any info that’s not clearly posted on a website. Recently was working on a project and realized the night before it was due that the info needed about a specific pollution violation was not posted on the DNREC website. Emailed the department’s PIO, told him what I needed and reminded him of my deadline. He waits until 4 p.m. the next day to respond — telling me I’ll have to file a FOIA, when all he had to do was call down the hall and ask someone to look it up.
Well, I know he was at the St. Anthony’s Italian Festival on the Friday at around 6PM. Maybe if we crowd-source this with sightings we can save the $1200.
Steve Newton,
I disagree. Mayrack is seeking a calendar. A document. A public schedule. The State Auditor’s public schedule of all meetings and public events. He has a calendar. That is what she is asking for.
@Nancy
I agree that he should have one, but I also (I asked an attorney about this today) think she phrased the request too broadly.
It is disturbing that neither candidate for Auditor seems to know how FOIA works.
IMHO, DNREC wrote the playbook for all the new FOI shennanigans rampant in DE. I call bull$hit! When anyone faced with a simple request for what should be public information for any reason, election year or not, gives the run around response coupled with attempts to dissuade the request with financial burden. Shame on Wagner and his entire office.
With all respect to Brenda, this kind of FOIA request is gimmicky month-before-the-election gruel. “Where was the [public official] six months ago?” Silly.
Here’s a real FOIA war:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/opinion/chris-christies-battle-against-transparency.html