Thursday, November 18, 2010

Fact Check: MCPS PIO demands $347.16 to find lease

More numbers plucked out of thin air by Tofig

Information obtained by the Parents' Coalition indicates that a juicy deal has been cut between MCPS and a company that rents MCPS facilities. This is a particularly interesting deal because we have information that strongly suggests that MCPS is helping the outside company avoid payment of taxes by keeping the terms of the leases secret. To get details about the deal, we asked MCPS for copies of the leases and contracts between MCPS and the outside company.

MCPS Director of Public Information (PIO) Dana Tofig is willing to hand over what is almost certainly just a dozen or so pages -- but only if we fork over $347.16 to "search and prepare records for inspection."  As explained in Tofig's letter below, MCPS has determined that it will take about 13 hours to search for the records, and that's without even knowing how many pages of documentation will be produced.

(Since we don't yet have the leases and contracts to confirm the details of the deal, we have redacted the outside company's name from Tofig's response.)

MCPS PIO says to hand over lots of money                          

In the meantime, we are seriously wondering just what sort of mess the MCPS files are in if it takes 13 hours to find a few leases.

4 comments:

  1. MCPS a d m i n i s t r a t i o n
    m o v e s
    v e r y
    s l o w

    ReplyDelete
  2. MCPS isn't moving slowly, they are refusing to move at all if we don't hand over $347.16 for what is most likely no more than 15 minutes of research. By claiming that costly research is needed to find records that should be easily accessible, MCPS is preventing the public from scrutinizing questionable deals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. One lease - 13 hours. What if they had to find a post-it note? Would that be 6 hours?

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's not thin air - it's a dart board.

    ReplyDelete

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