Freedom of Information
Ms. Peggy Bourne
City Clerk
City of Great Falls
Civic Center
Great Falls, MT 59401 HAND DELIVERED
Re: Freedom of Information Request
Dear Ms. Bourne:
Pursuant to the Montana State open records laws, MCA § 2-6-101 et. seq., and Article II, Section 9 of the Montana Constitution, I write to request access to and a copy of certain public Records maintained by you.
In order to ensure clarity in this request, I am taking the liberty of defining certain terms:
“City,” or “City of Great Falls”: The actual municipality, as well as its wholly owned utility, Electric City Power, Inc.
“City Manager”: Any city manager of the City of Great Falls, any assistant city manager of the City of Great Falls, any member of their staff and/or anyone who is directly supervised by them.
“Coal Plant”: The Highwood Generating Station.
“Contracts”: Any and all agreements, legally enforceable or otherwise, letters of intent, memoranda of understanding, and also including all Correspondence related to, evidencing, or referencing any agreements, letters of intent or memoranda of understanding, or the negotiations toward same. This term is intended to have the broadest possible meaning so as to include any and all written Records that in any way related to or were generated as a result of formation of Contracts, discussions related to Contracts, or negotiations of Contracts.
“Correspondence”: Permanent Program and Policy Correspondence, Non-Permanent Correspondence, Routine, and Non-Permanent Correspondence, Transitory
“Financial Records”: Financial statements, financial projections, or accounting Records.
“Non-Permanent Correspondence: Routine”: Incoming and outgoing letters, memoranda, and e-mail pertaining to the normal and routine administrative functions. This includes, without limitation, correspondence providing general information and requests for information, referring inquiries elsewhere, forwarding materials, acknowledging incoming letters, making arrangement for routine meetings or other events, and similar matters of minor administrative character which contain no substantive information.
“Non-Permanent Correspondence: Transitory”: Incoming and outgoing letters, memoranda, and e-mail that, while part of municipal business, are purely informational with a very short time-value. Examples include, without limitation, routine correspondence for which a record is needed only for a limited time, such as incoming or outgoing transmittal/cover messages that do not add information to that contained in the submitted material (“enclosed please find…”);routine questions and answers that require no administrative action, no policy decision, and no special compilation or research for reply(“out address is…,” “the deadline is…,”“please send 10 copies of…”); thank-yous, acknowledgments, congratulations; information copies of correspondence on which no documented administrative action was taken.
“Permanent Program and Policy Correspondence”: Incoming and outgoing letters, memoranda, and e-mail pertaining to the formulation, planning, and implementation of the mission, policies, programs, operations, and projects are prime examples of Permanent Program and Policy Correspondence. Records with permanent value include, but are not limited to: Records documenting municipal policy; Records documenting the policy process; Records that document how the municipality is organized and how it functions; its pattern of action and decision-making; its policies, procedures, and achievements; and Records that serve to substantiate accountability.
“Records”: Any and all physical and/or tangible matters, including, but not limited to, documents, in the possession custody or control of the City of Great Falls.
“SME”: Southern Montana Electric Generation & Transmission Cooperative, Inc.
“Weblog”: Any internet site operated by a citizen or entity.
Applying the foregoing definitions, I ask that the City of Great Falls provide me with the following information:
*All Correspondence sent or received by the City Manager, or sent or received with the knowledge or consent of the City Manager, if the same related to or referenced SME, the Coal Plant, the City’s relationship with or involvement in SME or the Coal Plant between September 1, 2006, and the date upon which your response is made.
*All Correspondence sent or received by the City Manager, or sent or received with the knowledge or consent of the City Manager, if the same related to or referenced any Weblog, and was sent or received between September 1, 2006, and the date upon which your response is made.
*All Contracts between the City and SME.
*All Contracts between the City and any person or entity if the same relates to the provision of electricity to such person or entity by the City.
*All correspondence sent or received by the City Manager, or sent or received with the knowledge or consent of the City Manager, if the same related to any Freedom of Information law request about any aspect of SME, the Coal Plant, the City’s relationship with or involvement in SME or the Coal Plant, if the Freedom of Information law request was provided to the City after January 1, 2005.
*The “feasibility study” referenced in the City of Great Falls City Commission minutes of November 4, 2003.
*All Records arising out of or in any way relating to the City’s ownership interest in SME, including all Correspondence, Contracts and/or Financial Records related to the City’s relationship with the other owners of SME. This specifically includes all Records that the City is legally entitled to inspect and copy pursuant to law.
If you do not maintain these Public Records, please let me know who does, and please include the proper custodian’s name and address.
I agree to pay any reasonable copying and postage fees of not more than $100.00. If the cost would be greater than this amount, please notify me. Please provide a receipt indicating the charges for each document.
The Records can be mailed to me at _____________, Great Falls, MT 59401, or can be sent via email to my email address, which is bigskylaw@yahoo.com. Please note that electronic transmission of the Records saves on copying costs.
I ask that you provide your response within ten (10) business days.
If you choose to deny this request, please provide a written explanation for the denial including a reference to the specific statutory exemption(s) upon which you rely. Also, please provide all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material.
I have conducted legal research on the issue of disclosure. The law is clear that a municipality cannot ‘privatize’ otherwise Public Records. Therefore, I hope you will read this request in good faith to include Records that may not be in the City’s physical possession, but which are within its control and can be easily obtained by request from the City, although perhaps not by request of a citizen.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.
Sincerely,
NOTE: If blog visitors are wondering where I came up with the convoluted document descriptions, see here.
6 comments:
Should financial considerations become a burden, give me a shout. My email can be found here
This is exciting! Good luck.
Thanks for your efforts GeeGuy. Any idea who will likely be issuing the bonds for the coal plant? Are we talking A-, or junk rating? How does that work and how does the financial institution go about evaluating the risk. They clearly can't go on just the Beck study as this included assumed info provided from SME without further evaluation. There must be a separate analysis. That would be helpful info to have. Follow the money.
It is a shame that these documents were no provided to you at your earlier request. Too bad our local government does not respect simple citizen requests and one has to resort to legal means to find answers.
Thank GeeGuy for watching out for the publics interests.......
I second what tmm said.
I'm sure your investment (in billable hours) exceeded $100 by the first post.
So, I sent a check for $100 to your office.
If the city fails to comply with your request, use the money towards a new keyboard, or better yet carpel-tunnel release!
Seriously, I have been a “lurker” on your blog since the beginning, and this issue has stirred in me a sense of “taxpayer responsibility”.
Thanks.
Wow thank you very much for this creative content, this has really helped me a lot, i was at this confused point in my life but after reading, this gave me more idea about how better my life could be. Thank you very much for the effort and kindly keep posting something like this every time, it goes a long way to help people like us. I also got help from another cool site like yours too called click here which describes a lot about like this site. Thank you very much and I am gonna be here often.
Post a Comment