For example: In this week's IFYI from the city manager you will notice that on July 24, 2013, Roch Smith Jr, George Hartzman and myself all requested Incumbent Candidate Requests. Today, over 6 months later I received the first reply to my request:
"Dear Billy:
This email is in response to your original PIRT # 2677 in which you requested to receive all information placed by incumbent candidates or any and all information provided by staff to incumbent candidates.
The City does not have any records responsive to this request.
I apologize in advance for the lateness of this response as I am working diligently to improve and increase the turnaround time for PIRT requests.
I would be happy to meet with you to discuss how you believe the PIRT system could be approved upon.
Thank you again for your request.
Sincerely,
Sarah Healy"
The problem never was with Sarah and Donnie. As a matter of fact, both were hired to fix a problem created by their bosses on city staff and city council. The fact that I would receive such a response as the above proves that to be true. Roch, George and I made our request on July 24. The fact that the city has no records indicates that either they are lying or they assumed they would never have to honor our request and therefore kept no records.
I'll allow you to make up your own minds as to which the case my be.
As a matter of fact, Roch warned them multiple times including on August 13, 2013 when he wrote in his article, No objections from Council as City bestows special secrecy on candidates:
"People who escape the tracking of the PIRT system and have their requests answered without being monitored include:
Elected representatives, including members of city council
Professional media (excluding Yes!Weekly)
Lawyers
Engineers and architects
Real estate and business people
Former city employees
City Manager Denise Turner-Roth goes one step further and heaps extra scrutiny on the few people entered into the PIRT system by publishing their names and the information they requested in a memo that she sends to city council, city staff, community bigwigs and local media every Friday.
Until recently, the Manager's weekly memo included the requests of challenger city council candidates, people like George Hartzman (mayor), Ben Holder (at-large) and Sal Leone (district 5), but not the requests made by incumbent candidates.
Now, in a mind-numbing exhibition of just how rudderless the City's management is in their approach to transparency, the City Manager has decided that, rather than level the playing field by including the requests made by sitting city council people in her weekly memo along with those made by challenging candidates, no candidate requests—challengers' or incumbents'—will be included in her weekly memo."
The problem only grows worse for Greensboro... It appears PIRTs may have been used to manipulate the results of the 2013 election. Of course the only way to know is to see the actual PIRTs given to incumbents but the city claims not to have records of incumbent requests even though no less than 3 of us requested said information last July. It appears the State Election Board may soon be adding its investigation to that of the NC Attorney General.
If I were the city attorney I'd be out looking for a private sector job, perhaps as a file clerk or something of that nature.
