Jun 10 (5 days ago)
 | | |||
Hello Mr. Huber,
Per our discussion last Tuesday night in Rockland, I followed up on the status of your FOAA request as outlined in your email below dates 2/26/13. From conversations with staff, I understand that Brian Swan provided information for Penobscot Bay area projects for the month of February to you via email on 3/8/13 at no charge, and noted that any additional requests would require payment as outlined in earlier emails. The DMR did not receive further communication, and therefore considered this request to be complete.
You had previously requested impact reviews for all projects around Penobscot Bay for years 2011 and 2012. As previously stated, projects are not filed electronically by their location, so to search them individually in order to identify the location was estimated to take 2-3 days of staff time and a cost of approximately $240-360. Since we did not receive payment or further communication, we have assumed that you did not want to proceed in that fashion at this time, but please let us know if we misunderstood. If you are seeking different information than outlined here, we will need a specific request other than your original request for all projects around Penobscot Bay for years 2011 and 2012, and the cost will be re-calculated based on the specific request.
Please let me know if you have additional questions or requests.
Meredith
===========================================================
Response 1.
Thank you for replying Meredith,
Thank you for your letter.
We takje strong issues with Mr Sw3an's assertion of the multiple days it woulde take him to locate his own Environmental a
I'm a bit disappointed - not in you - your support of your staff is laudable - rather in Mr. Swan's continuing efforts to keep as opaque as possible his upcoming, ongoing and past work products: Swan's Environmental Reviews of federal and state project applications under Maine's environmental core laws, carried out pursuant to the coastal zone management act.
Our discontent with Mr Swan's performance stretches back to the mid -1990s when he made an effort to reduce the transparency of DMR's review of Angus King's Sears Island woodchip port proposal, his Re: Seal Island UXO. In 2008 when he offered to supply information about "ongoing or proposed projects" we might be interested in, but declined to supply us a list of those projects coming across his plate.
Sears Island
x
Ron Huber <coastwatch@gmail.com>
9/30/08
You wrote
If there are other ongoing or proposed projects you are particularly interested in or wish to provide comments on, please let me know.
Let's start by your letting me know what ongoing or proposed projects/programs are presently filling your in and out boxes, or otherwise demanding your time during work hours. By these I can get a sense of the scope of local, state, interstate and/or federal activities you represent DMR's interests in or at.
While coming from Snowe's staff you are deep in the know about the doings of the New England Fishery Management Council and about you are but a year into DMR deputy-commissioning. his broader effort to remain unaccountable for his actions representing Maine's marine resources before state and federal permitting & licensing agencies. His determinedly obscurantist approach to environmental permit and license reviews has greatly hindered conservation and protection of Maine's marine environments, including those of Penobscot Bay.
During his tenure as Environmental Coordinator, nearly all commercial and recreational finfisheries in state waters have vanished. Good habitat quality, prey availablity and good water quality are just as important as fisheries management in sustaining coastal fishes.
Swan - from the wee bit of evidence he has most grudgingly released - has found that there to be be "no significant impacts" for virtually every development proposal or license that has come across his desk, irregardless of how many miles of nearby shorelines he has already okayed for armoring or seawalling, of how much dredging has already taken place.
Instead of standing up for Maine's living marine resources and their environment, Swan has rubberstamped blatantly destructive projects
Mr Swan has given no explanation for why it would take him an estimated "2-4 working days" to locate the requested items. Not only is the estimate extraordinarily broad; even the lowball estimate is an absurd length of time to find items that should take no more than an hour to locate, compile and print, or turn into emailable pdfs and send. (Maybe two hours if he's feeling logy that day). As I suggested to him
(1) All of the documents requested are digitized and on the computer system that Swan uses.
(2) All of them include zip codes as part of their information.
(3) Using a simple zip code search - I gave him the Penobscot Bay towns' zip codes - the requested environmental review files will all appear in digital form on his screen. There may be a few other files but given the zip codes as limiters, they will be support data that he based each decision on. Assuming Mr Swan has at least a rudimentary logic to his system of file naming, he would be able to identify his Environmental Reviews among those files, and suss out their dates, too.
(4) He would select the desired files, then either attach those files as pdfs or doc files to an email.
or hit "print" in which case he would need to put them in an envelope and address it to requester.
Elapsed time: 45 to 80 minutes
Swan has no true reason to stretch this simple search out over days How? One imagines:
Day 1. Swan ponders: what computer directory are my Environmental Reviews in? The day passes.
Day 2. Swan clicks on that directory. There they are! The day passes.
Day 3. Swan gazes upon his filenames. Which are my Pen Bay area E.Rs? he wonders. The day passes
Day 4. Swan's quest pays off! He selects those files, emails them as pdfs or doc files to Huber.
Please consider the following points:
* Mr Swan has given no explanation of why it would take him an estimated "2-4 working days" to locate the requested items. Not only is the estimate extraordinarily broad but even the lowball estimate is an absurd length of time to find items that should take no more than an hour to locate, compile and print - or turn into emailable pdfs. (Maybe two hours if he's feeling logy that day)
(1) All of the documents requested are digitized and on the computer system that he uses.
(2) All of them include zip codes as part of their information.
(3) Using a simple zip code search - as I suggested to him - the requested environmental reviews files would all appear in digital form as requested. There may a a few other files but given the zip codes, they will be support data that he based each decision on. Assuming Mr Swan has at least a rudimentary system of file naming, he should be able to identify his Environmental Reviews among those files.
(4) He would then hit "print" and they would print out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Response 2.
Jun 12 (3 days ago)
| | |||
Sorry Meredith my previous email was sent prematurely, as you can see. Please delete it.
Our point is: Mr Swan has given no explanation of why it would take him an estimated "2-4 working days" to locate the requested items - the handful of official environmental reviews of projects in the towns around Penobscot Bay he's written for the last two years. It doesn't pass the straight face test. What would he be doing each day? We've asked. He hasn't answered. (We consider this a great impertinence on his part)
Will you find that out?
The information we've requested is kept by Mr. Swan as digital files, all in the same format and following the same template form. They are easily locatable using a simple zip code based search of the directories or folders Swan keeps his files in. Even if Swan's file-naming and filing systems are so poor that he can't identify his own recent work products in his own directories, (!) he can use the zip code search to locate them. An hour, two at most will suffice. We've supplied him with a list of the zip codes around Penobscot Bay.
Unless your Environmental Coordinator can come up with an explanation for turning a simple electronic search into a four day epic - which he has so far failed to do, we can only consider this to be a continuation of the obstructionist behavior and efforts at nonaccountability that Brian Swan has exhibited over the past two decades of his career.
The Friends of Penobscot Bay is committed to bringing transparency to the activities and work products of the Department of Marine Resources' Environmental Coordinator, given the position's importance in coastal and marine decisionmaking. Swan seems committed to the opposite.
Again we look forward to an explanation of how your environmental coordinator would spend up to 4 days seeking out information that is literally only a few clicks away. If he is not able to access his own recent reports without days of effort, than he needs an intern to organize his files into something coherent. Or training.
Mr. Swan may prefer to work in the shadows, but that is not acceptable attitude for a DMR public servant to take.
Sincerely
Ron Huber for
Friends of Penobscot Bay
Jun 14 (1 day ago)
| | |||
Mr. Huber,
In response to your email below, I thought it might be helpful to provide some additional information from the Maine Freedom of Access website, which you will find below my response. I am writing to confirm that Brian Swan has provided you a good faith, nonbinding estimate of the time he believes it will take him to comply with your request for all impact reviews for all projects within the 23 towns around Penobscot Bay (which you listed in a separate email to Brian) for the years 2011 and 2012.
In response to your question about why this request will take 2-3 days, I would again note that this is a best estimate, and is non-binding. Your final charge will not exceed the $15/hr allowable under law, not including the first hour of searching, and you will only be charged for the actual cost of the time it takes to perform the search and compilation of the information you have requested. Your request is expected to take this amount of time because it involves both electronic search and sorting, as well as manual retrieval of documents. Our good faith estimate is that this may take up to an hour per town for towns with large numbers of impact reviews, but in some cases may be less.
We are requesting payment in advance because the estimated cost exceeds $100. We would suggest that if you would like to proceed with your request, that you provide payment to the Department of Marine Resources in the amount of $105, for 8 hours (the first hour is free), and we will begin to work through the list of towns you have provided in previous emails. After 8 hours, we could then provide you with an updated estimate of the amount of time we expect would be necessary to complete the search/compilation. This would also allow the DMR to more accurately assess the cost, and give you an opportunity to determine whether you wish to proceed.
Finally, I would ask that you please refrain from further communications with Brian Swan directly, and instead request information from theDMR through our Public Access Officer, Jessica McKay, who works here in the Commissioner’s office and handles FOAA requests as part of her position duties. I have cc’d her on this email.
Please contact me or Jessica if you have further questions, or indicate your intent to proceed with this request by submitting payment. If we do not receive payment, we will consider this request to have been withdrawn.
Meredith _________
Meredith Mendelson
Deputy Commissioner
Maine Department of Marine Resources
Does an agency have to estimate how long it will take to respond to my request?
Yes. An agency or official must provide a good faith, nonbinding estimate of how long it will take to comply with the request. The agency or official shall make a good faith effort to fully respond within the estimated time. 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(3)
Can an agency charge for public records?
There is no initial fee for submitting a FOAA request and agencies cannot charge an individual to inspect records unless the public record cannot be inspected without being compiled or converted. 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(8)(D) However, agencies can and normally do charge for copying records. Although the FOAA does not set standard copying rates, it permits agencies to charge "a reasonable fee to cover the cost of copying". 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(8)(A)
Agencies and officials may also charge fees for the time spent searching for, retrieving, compiling or redacting confidential information from the requested records. The FOAA authorizes agencies or officials to charge $15 per hour after the first hour of staff time per request. 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(8)(B) Where conversion of a record is necessary, the agency or official may also charge a fee to cover the actual cost of conversion. 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(8)(C)
The agency or official must prepare an estimate of the time and cost required to complete a request and if the estimate is greater than $30, the agency or official must notify the requester before proceeding. The agency may request payment of the costs in advance if the estimated cost exceeds $100 or if the requester has previously failed to pay a fee properly assessed under the FOAA. 1 M.R.S. § 408-A(9), (10)
Is a public agency or official required under the Freedom of Access Act to honor a "standing request" for information, such as a request that certain reports be sent to me automatically each month?
No. A public agency or official is required to make available for inspection and copying, subject to any applicable exemptions, only those public records that exist on the date of the request. Persons seeking to inspect or obtain copies of public records on a continuing basis are required to make a new request for any additional records sought after the date of the original request.
From: Ron Huber [mailto:coastwatch@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:20 AM
To: Mendelson, Meredith; Swan, Brian
Subject: Re: Follow up from RPB meeting
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:20 AM
To: Mendelson, Meredith; Swan, Brian
Subject: Re: Follow up from RPB meeting
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mendelson
