This is the true story of how the City of Somerville stonewalled my request for public records and then went out of its way to satisfy a very similar request by BU’s New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR).

Part 1 : My Requests

• April 2009
  • I emailed Stephanie Hirsch who was working in the City’s SomerStat Office requesting parking ticket records dating back to the year 2000. She responded:
    • Hi Barry -Sorry for the delay. I looked into the request and have conferred with Tom Champion (Director of Communications) and John Gannon, who handle these kinds of questions for the City. As I understand it, for requests of this size and scope, the best way to proceed is to file a precise and detailed public records request directed to:
      

      John Gannon
      City Solicitor
      City of Somerville
      93 Highland Ave
      Somerville MA 02143

    • Stephanie also included some helpful information from the Secretary of State’s Office about how to file public records requests.
• May 2009
  • I mailed a paper letter to Tom Champion and John Gannon repeating my request for the parking ticket data and indicating that a response would be due in 10 days.
  • 13 days after sending my letter, I emailed them pointing out the excessive delay.
  • 15 days after sending my letter, I received an email from Tom apologizing for the delay and acknowledging receipt of my letter. He explained that they were slowed down due to the fiscal crisis.
    • Additionally, Tom told me that the City’s then-current ticket data vendor would charge $1,600 for a single print-out of the records totaling 41,000 pages. The vendor had not given them any estimate for delivering the records in electronic form. He said the City expected to transition to a new vendor on June 22nd.
    • Tom explained that $1,600 was a low estimate because the City’s legal dept would need to perform redaction to eliminate any personally identifying information, such as license plate numbers. Therefore, he made the reasonable suggestions that we:
      1. Wait for the new ticket vendor and see if we can get the data in electronic form omitting any sensitive data.
      2. Reduce the costs by seeing if the City can provide charts and other aggregate information that would be interesting to me without having to export all the records.
    • The same day, I emailed Tom back amending my request for either the electronic records minus personally identifying info or, if that wasn’t possible, some graphs and charts aggregating the data.
• Late June 2009
  • Having received no reply for about a month, I emailed Tom Champion asking for a response to my last, amended, records request.
• Mid to late August
  • No response yet from Tom.
  • I created the SV post Fund This Story : Somerville Parking Tickets to start collecting money that would eventually help pay an investigative journalist to analyze the requested parking records.
  • I submitted five parking-related records requests via email to Tom and Public Information Officer Jackie Rossetti, being careful this time to exclude personally identifying information. The requests included:
    • Parking Ticket Data
    • Parking Ticket Appeals
    • Parking Officer Data
    • Parking Meter Revenues
    • Car Towing Information
• Mid to late September
  • Then-City Solicitor John Gannon emails me indicating exorbitant fees relating to printing the records and then performing redactions. I reply immediately asking for the data in tabular electronic format instead in which personally identifying information could easily be removed.
  • Deputy Chief Paul Upton with the SPD contacts me soon and very helpfully emails me the car towing data, free of charge, in electronic tabular format.
  • Mike Rezendes, a reporter with the Boston Globe, contacts me about my public records requests and includes me in his Sep 24th front-page story High costs can make open records seem closed
  • At the end of the month, I emailed Tom Champion to follow up on my other requests and ask why the City only wanted to charge me high costs for redacted paper copies, but wasn’t willing to consider send the data in electronic format to lower the costs. Tom replied only that I should communicate solely with Mr. Gannon about my requests. This was the last message I received from the City about my requests.

Part 2 : NECIR’s Requests

• Late September 2009
  • I contacted Joe Bergantino, Director/Senior Investigative Reporter at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) at Boston University about my requests.
• Oct 5 : Joe submits his own request to John Gannon for parking ticket data dating back to Jan 1, 2007
• Oct 15 : Exactly ten days after Joe’s request, John responds requesting clarification on which data fields should be provided.
• Oct 19 : Joe responds with clarification.
• Oct 30 : Joe asks John for an update after not yet having received a response.
• Nov 12 : John responds, apologizing for the delay, saying that the City had made an extra effort to figure out which fields could be provided without redaction (only license plate numbers seemed questionable). He listed the field names individually and asked which ones Joe was interested in.
• Nov 13 : Joe replied to John indicating which pieces of data he’d like. John replies that he will try to send the data by Nov 20th. Interestingly, Mr. Gannon makes no mention of any costs associated with the data preparation.
• Nov 24: Joe emails John to ask for an update on the records request after receiving nothing so far. Joe received the data not too long afterward.

By the way, there is now a very helpful website called MuckRock.com run by Somerville resident Michael Morisy that facilitates creating, submitting, and tracking requests for public records.