GraniteGrok

I filed a Right To Know ("RTK" - otherwise known as a Freedom Of Information Act "FOIA" in almost all other States) at the County level concerning how many had been filed by Doug (see here).

Well, at the same time I filed that one, I followed up on a question that I had asked at the Public Hearing on the Belknap County budget with another one:

From:    Skip Murphy
To:        Nancy Cook, Belknap County
Date:     3/7/08

Subject:    Right To Know Request

This Right To Know request is follow up to my question to you at the Belknap County Public Hearing (Tuesday, March 4, 2008) concerning a five (5) year roll up of the sub-accounts across the departments. 

The current budget is by Department (e.g., Corrections, Nursing Home) and then the sub-accounts per Department (e.g., health insurance, telephone, dues and association memberships, et al).

Instead, I am looking for a spreadsheet in softcopy (e.g., EXCEL) that mimics that of the attached document (number used in that document are just placeholders for clarity).  This will allow for easier trend analysis in the future.

I am willing to pay any reasonable cost for the printing of the final materials (which should only take a few pages) and for the time to copy the spreadsheet (from your system to mine or the time to email that spreadsheet to me as an attachment).

Kindest Regards,

 “Skip” 

And I even gave Ms Cook (who has since been fired from her $93K/year Finance and is under investigation by the State AG's office) a sample of what I wanted (after the jump).

So what did I get?  Pretty much...nothing

Really, nothing more than a collection of past yearly budget reports - "There, you reformat it!"  She swore that their computer system had no capability to generate this kind of report.  Nor did she have any EXCEL spreadsheets having this information.

Get that?  No EXCEL sheets - she even told me that they did not have any copies of EXCEL in her office!  I said "how about ANY spreadsheet program"?  "No!".

An aside: Please look here - look at the bottom left hand corner: "excel:cntytax"
(Heh!  Should I contact the BSA, given what I have been told and what I see?). 

So here is the question that I ask of you:  should government employees only follow the Letter of the Law (by giving me the raw budget reports for meetings that will take quite some time to basically hand enter) or the Spirit of the Law?

You know, give citizens (who pay for their salaries) what they actually asked for?  Or is it their right to make it has hard as possible?  To make citizens jump through hoops and endure what seems to be delaying tactics?  Should there be a recourse when confronted with this strategy?

After all, most States have enacted some kind of "Lemon Law" when it comes to new, but ill behaved, cars - why not in this case?  Why is it fair on one hand but not the other? 

Why is it that government, time and time again, demands much of the private sector and its citizenry, but protects itself from the same? 

And in this case, should one be asking - most companies watch this kind of stuff (5 year trend analysis) like hawks - why isn't government?