City Hall is not your friend: the PRA Request
Government agencies always love to talk about their transparency and how hard they work providing services to the folk who pay their salaries. But let’s not forget that secrecy is the unspoken watchword of all bureaucracies of whatever type.
Here’s a prime example of a dodge to a Public Act Records request. Somebody wants information about the low bidder on the infamous Trail to Nowhere©. The low bidder exactly matched the City’s “Engineer’s Estimate” to within five cents. Disclosure: this request was not made by FFFF,
The information requested is really specific. Just the sort of thing that avoids rejection based on over generalization or on requiring an onerous collection effort.
Uh, oh. The requestor made a BIG mistake.
He/she made his/her request on April 30th, 8 days after the bid. But the contract had not yet been awarded. Therefore, technically, there was no information to disclose because there was no awardee.
The requestor may or may not have known there was no award yet, and assumed there was. Or maybe he/she should have said “low bidder.” Now, you might say that the City’s Engineering Department are not mind readers, and so honestly said there were no records. And yet all of the information requested about low-bidder KASA Construction is known by the City, and that is obviously what the requestor wanted. Now, when (and if) the award is made the requestor will never get his request answered because it already has been.
I notice how this request was closed on the very morning the contract was expected to be approved by the City Council. Now, the City might have waited until the next day when they believed the question could be answerable. But no. Never answer a question you can avoid. Done and done.
There is a moral to this story, and that is that the City, even if they are capable of competently responding to a PRA request (wait for my next post), will never release information that it deems sensitive if it can help it, and you need to craft your request in a way that is specific enough and that contemplates the subtleties of the English language. And you will not get an explanation of how you failed.
Somewhat off topic, I wonder what the requestor’s motive was here. The time to protest a bid had passed.
Municipalities HATE the CPRA. They resist accountability and transparency at every turn.
That’s a dirty little dodge. I can just see a couples of low level goons giggling about it. Or maybe not so low level.
The median bids were close – clustered at $2,3 million. Over $400K more than the “Engineer’s Estimate.” This is going to get uglier.
And people are afraid that a city charter will lead to a corrupt bidding process?
People aren’t afraid of charter cities or corrupt bidding processes, whatever that means. Fearmongering has become a Fullerton calling card.
It’s really about Zahra and the Observer Sisters stirring up trouble. Every point they push is a falsehood.
Shameless Charles is just as bad. She’s getting CSUF tools to yak it up about they know not what.
The moral of this story is spot-on.
Looking forward to hearing Hoogertwat’s nonsensical and bloviated thoughts on this.