“Green Keene” City Bureaucrats Insist on Paper Records
Anyone who spends much time paying attention to the city’s politicians and bureaucrats will hear all kinds of talk about being “green”. Personally, I find it all very silly, but it will serve to point out their hypocrisy. Wallace Nolen used a freedom of information request to attain information on all of the city employees. He specified that he wanted it in electronic format, but the city refused, insisting on giving him pages and pages of documentation. Wallace sued and the judge (of course) found in favor of the city. So, rather than just emailing Wallace the info, they instead will unnecessarily spend money on paper and ink and print out a bunch of papers. Perhaps their motto is, “The City of Keene: We’re ‘green’, but only when it benefits us.”
Here’s the Keene Sentinel story with the details:
A Cheshire County Superior Court judge has dismissed a Vermont man’s right-to-know lawsuit against the city of Keene.
Judge John P. Arnold ruled earlier this week that the city responded appropriately to Wallace S. Nolen’s public records request. Nolen, of Barre, Vt., asked for the names, titles, salaries, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and work locations of every city employee.
The city provided paperwork to Nolen that contained the information he requested, with the exception of work locations for each employee. No such records exist and the city is not authorized to create a record for Nolen, Arnold ruled.
Nolen took the city to court after it denied his request to have the employee information provided to him in electronic format. Nolen said he wanted the information e-mailed to him so he could plug it into a database he’s building as part of a class-action lawsuit.
The database contains employee information from tens of thousands of municipalities in 30 states, including much of New England, according to Nolen. He argued that it would take too long to copy the employee information from the paperwork the city provided to his database.
In his ruling, Arnold stated that the city was not required to provide the employee information in electronic format. The city had only to make the records available to Nolen, Arnold concluded.
Also, the records Nolen requested, which totaled up to 40 pages, were “not so numerous that the cost of copying or inspection was burdensome,” Arnold wrote.
The city offered to mail the records to Nolen to save him a trip from Barre to Keene and back, as long as Nolen paid copying and shipping costs, which was less than $20, according to Arnold.
Nolen is gathering employee information in an attempt to prove that states consistently fail to notify not only residents but their own employees of unclaimed property to which they are entitled. He wants to overhaul unclaimed property laws and spur banks and state treasurers to be more diligent in helping people claim lost assets.
Nolen’s lawsuit against the city was unique in that it raised the issue of whether municipalities should be required to answer right-to-know requests in a particular format. The law is silent on the issue, but Arnold determined that “as long as the records are made available for inspection and copying, a public body has satisfied its duties under the statute.”
City Attorney Thomas P. Mullins had argued in court prior to Arnold’s ruling that the city wasn’t required to comply with Nolen’s request because he is not a New Hampshire resident. Arnold did not address that argument in his ruling, and provided no further explanation of the issue.
In a separate right-to-know issue, Nolen requested copies of “anything that relates to any criminal complaint” filed against David Ridley, an activist and videographer from Grafton. Ridley was arrested in March at Keene District Court when he refused to turn off his camera in the court’s lobby.
The city gave Nolen the police records in Ridley’s case five days after his request, an appropriate response under state law, according to Arnold.
Nolen requested compensation for attorney’s fees and court costs tied to the lawsuit, as did the city. Arnold denied both requests after determining Nolen’s lawsuit was not frivolous and the city did not violate public records laws.
Phillip Bantz can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1409, or pbantz@keenesentinel.com.
