City of Windsor Stonewalls

Request for Information…Again!

Tab for Freedom of Information Request set Impossibly High

“Taxpayers should not be amused if history repeats itself and the city is found once again to have thrown up roadblocks when it should have been opening doors.”

Windsor Star

"This seems to be a stalling effort to keep information from coming out," said Horwath. "It certainly does not look good for municipal officials to respond this way to a request for information."

Andrea Horwath – Hamilton NDP MP

“But the city's bill to process Schnurr's request does seem extraordinary, especially considering the more general parts of his query deal with correspondence about the tunnel between various levels of government that should be relatively easy to find and review.”

Windsor Star

"The city might well be acting in good faith here but it gave up its right to the benefit of the doubt in these matters when it fought against the release of a deal that subsidized parking spaces for patrons of the downtown Keg. The privacy commissioner deemed the city's arguments against disclosure so weak they weren't even addressed in the order to release the deal. The city also endeavoured to keep the deal with The Windsor Spitfires secret, remember, until the privacy commissioner ordered it released."

Windsor Star

Why is it that this greatly distinguished city administration is so hell bent on working against its citizens? Last week the City finally replied to Chriss Schnurr’s Freedom of Information Request which he filed on July 3. In it, he asked for information pertaining to the 400 Building audit, and the Detroit Windsor Tunnel Deal. Here is the complete reply which he received from the city:

This office received your Freedom of Information request July 3, 2008 for access to City records in which you asked for the following:

Access to the Audit Report prepared by former city auditor Mike Dunbar with respect to the 400 City Hall Square building.

Any or all appraisal reports, valuations prepared by any party with respect to the tunnel or any part of it from September 2005 until the present.

Any or all records sent to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit, and to members of the Mayor’s office and to Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. from the City of Windsor, inclusive of any or all City of Windsor departments and the Windsor Mayor’s office as well as all outside cousel and consultants, as it pertains to what is known as the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Deal from January 1, 2005 until the present and request continued access from this date forward.

The application made to Infrastructure Ontario regarding an infrastructure loan as it pertains to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

Any or all records received from Infrastructure Ontario by the City of Windsor and/or the Windsor Tunnel Corporation or the new Tunnel corporation including records to outside counsel and consultants.

All records of correspondence to and from any or all members of Council, city administrators and/or the Mayor and/or the Office of the Mayor to any or all Ministry’s of the Government of Ontario, Cabinet Ministers or members of Parliament; as they pertain to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel from January 1, 2005 until the present.

An itemized list of expenditures, including but not limited to travel costs assumed by any administrator, councillor, employee of the City of Windsor as well as an itemized breakdown of legal and consulting expenditures as it pertains to the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Deal from January 1, 2005 to the present.

I am informing you that the appropriate City departments were contacted and responsive records pertaining to your request were located. Your request, as submitted, will require a lengthy manual search through a large number of files by specific staff in these departments. Some records are located off-site and will require time to perform the search. Under these circumstances, the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act allows a municipality to implement a user-pay principal in order to complete your request.

Based on my review of a representative sample of the records and/or advice obtained from a knowledgeable records person in each department, the total fees to process your request are estimated to be $354,650.00. These records consist of letters, e-mails and correspondence however please note that some records are Solicitor-Client privileged and as such the City will be relying on s. 12 Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Other records may be considered third party information, thereby requiring third party notification, s. 10 of the Act. The City may also be relying on sections 6, 7, 9, 11, and 15 of the Act.

As we have not yet completed the search and reviewed all of the records in detail, no final decision has been made regarding access. I estimate partial access to the records will be granted dependent on the application of the exemptions contained within the Act. I estimate half the responsive records will be subject to severing.

The following are fee estimates calculated by department for both paper and electronic documents:

Department Search Time Pages
General Manager, Corporate Services 2749.50 h 500 Legal Counsel 7042.19 h 84,506Mayor’s Office 650.25 h 37,603Finance 100.00 h 500Windsor Tunnel Commission 425.00 h 5,100

The fee estimate is broken down as follows for manually searching preparing, and photocopying the records:

Searching TimeSearch time is calculated by taking into account the actions necessary to locate the requested records and how the records are stored and maintained as well as the actual amount of time needed in each step of locating the requested records. (Fees, Fee Estimates and Fee Waivers for Requests Under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Guidlines for Government Institutions, IPC):

Search time for your request: 10,966.94 hours @ $30.00/hour = $329,008.20
Preparation TimePreparation time is calculated for the actual records to be disclosed and includes the time spent on severing records, generally 2.00 minutes per page (Order P-4)since many of the documents may require multiple severing. (Fees, Fee Estimates and Fee Waivers for Requests Under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Guidelines for Government Institutions, IPC):

Preparation time for your request: N/A (included in search time)
Photocopying CostsPhotocopying costs are generally charged for each page that is photocopied and/or printed from a computer. (Fees, Fee Estimates and Fee Waivers for Requests Under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Guidelines for Government Institutions, IPC): Photocopying cost for your request: 128,209 @ $0.20 = $25,641.80

You are required to pay 50% of the above fee estimate by certified cheque, which has been calculated at $177,325.00.

Under the Act, I will not proceed further with your request until the City Clerk has received this amount.

The Act also provides that all or part of the fee can be waived, if, in our opinion, it is fair and equitable to do so, in certain circumstances. Please find enclosed a copy of section 45 of the Act and section 8 of Regulation 823. You may be required to provide evidence in support of any fee waiver request. Please notify me as soon as possible if you wish to proceed with a request for a fee waiver.

Due to the large number of records involved in your request, under Section 20, Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, I will be exercising an extension of 500 days from the day your deposit is received by this office, in order to complete your request. This will allow staff from each department, as identified above, sufficient time to work on your request. This time frame may change for some records due to third party notification procedures, however you will be notified accordingly.

You may ask for a review of this interim decision regarding the fee estimate and the time extension, only, within 30 days of receiving this letter by writing to: The Information and Privacy Commission/Ontario, 2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 1A8, Telephone: 416-326-3333 or toll free 1-800-387-0073.

If you decide to request a review of this decision, please provide the Commissioner’s Office with the following:
The file number listed at the beginning of this letter;
A copy of this decision letter;
A copy of the original request for information you sent to our institution; and
The reasons why you believe the records exist (if the decision was that no records exist).
In addition, you must send an appeal fee to the Commissioner’s Office. If your request was for your personal information, the appeal fee is $10.00. The appeal fee for all other requests for information is $25.00. Please include the fee with your letter of appeal - appeal fees should be in the form of either a cheque or money order, payable to the Minister of Finance.

Did you get that? $354,650.00! These geniuses actually itemized and rationalized the final tab for us. Completely reasonable considering its going to take them 11,000 man hours to do it. Let’s see…Based on 260 work days per year at 6.75 hours per day; that’s 1755 hrs per year divided into 11,000. That would be…Ah …6.2678 years. 6 years and 65 days for one person to process Mr. Schnurr’s request! Both audits; Mike Dunbar’s original and the new embellished, feel good, massaged and sanitized version only took a couple of years. At least so far.

In all fairness the City indicates that they can have it done by four people in 500 business days. Just under two years. Not too shabby all things considered. Oh! Lets not forget that after Mr. Schnurr forks over the mandatory 50 per cent deposit or $177,325.00 for the city to proceed, he gets no guarantee of receiving any information at all. Not to worry though. Windsor tax payers can just sit back and ride this one out. After all, it wasn’t us who submitted the F.O.I. Let Chriss Schnurr worry about that. Windsor’s 95000 tax payers don’t even have to flinch at the $3.74 it would cost each of us collectively to pay out $354,650.00. Besides…That’s chump change compared to the $75 plus million dollars we’ll be on the hook for once we take ownership of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel or the overages we already spent on the 400 building.

Do you see where this is going? Can you fathom why Freedom of Information is so important? Does our City Administration have the right to hide and withhold information from it tax payers (their employer)? By the way…All of the City’s “Enron Math” is obvious. Both of these issues; the Detroit –Windsor Tunnel Deal and the highly suspect 400 Building audit are current events. Mike Dunbar’s original audit is probably sitting on the City Managers desk. The Tunnel file is most likely sitting on Cliff Sutt’s desk. Why can’t our hired and elected officials start working for their city instead of against it?

Here is more suggested reading. Have a party:

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/editorial/story.html?id=38f4ea9f-afe7-4c3b-a73c-30d1f611089d
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=c3266ee8-40cb-4234-b92a-2e83288e315b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcBsJ7O6wY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZHFqpkDws
http://kdducktalk.blogspot.com/
http://windsorcityon.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-on-weacts-foi-request.html
http://chrisschnurr.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/weekend-blog-special-weact-outlines-plan-of-action/