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John, I saw the discussion last night. The meeting overall was atrocious for various reasons. But the overall impression given by Holliday on the public record request was one of reluctant cooperation-- as if he was being sent to the dentist's chair. And I wonder what the cooperation level would be if an attorney had not filed the request.

Keith Holliday is ending poorly.

I, too, watched it; well, some of it. There are two issues, I think. One is transparency and opening the people's business to the people. The other is the cost of providing the information.

If transparency is your philosophy, why would you bristle at the cost?

For coincidental context, see the excerpt from the Action Greensboro, Phase II report cited here by Sue.

John, the idea for this request was initiated by Roch Smith Jr. Joe and I were both interested in obtaining much of the same information, so we agreed that we would all join together in making the request.

I have agreed to donate my services to overcome the legal roadblocks that we anticipate will be thrown in our direction, and I have already received offers from others in the legal community to donate time towards this effort.

That said, a meeting is scheduled for November 30th with the City Attorney's office to narrow our request. I suspect that much of what the outgoing mayor and Johnson are referring to when they mention the size of the request will be eliminated by us at that meeting as not relevant to our requests.

Still, had the City been more forthcoming about Project Homestead and the Wray affair in the past, we would have started out this task with a much more focused request. Instead, providing essentially nothing results in a request for everything. Where else do you start?

Of course, Linda Miles never mentioned to me that she was retiring when we scheduled this meeting last week. Roch and I still plan on having that meeting whether she is present or not. Dr. Guarino cannot attend because of prior commitments.

The cost to the City for the production of documents will likely be directly related to their level of cooperation.

For the record, I will update our progress as matters move along, and I will document and address every objection to release of any documents that is made by the City as they occur. We believe that every document we requested must legally be released and will vigorously fight any attempts to prevent that from happening.

There's really only one way the City (and every governing body in the nation) can prevent themselves from being completely overrun with requests such as the one Roch and Sam have just made and that is to learn how to become proactive and transparent in everything they do.

As one who was seated next to Roch when he and Sam agreed to follow this route I am ROTFLMAO thinking about the completely unnecessary task City leaders are currently facing. You see, had they chose to be open in the first place they wouldn't be sweating bullets now.

Now, about the State Bar investigating Linda Miles...

Yes. And I didn't mean to disrespect Roch's and Joe's roles in this. The request was simply signed by you so I left it at that.

Is it possible for Ms. Miles to avoid an investigation by retiring?

I'm not sure why the mayor describes the request as "alarming," but that aside, it sounds like the city is doing the right thing so far.

I think the mayor was probably alarmed by the size of the request.

I suppose the city is doing the right thing, but it really hasn't done anything yet that I can tell, other than making y'all request public, which you have already done.

I guess I'm trying to be optomistic. A willingness to keep the process in the public eye and a seriousness evidenced by assigning additional staff to the task are what I see as doing the right thing so far.

Yes, the request is broad and deep. As Billy rightly pointed out, the nature of the request is dictated by the dearth of information made available to date. Even so, I think there are some things that may technically fall withing the realm of our request that are going to be reasonably eliminated by mutual consent.

I honestly think this will be a good thing for Greensboro as we will be able to move forward confident that our understanding is informed by the facts and not speculation and inuendo; hopeful also that city government will be more transparent in the future so that these kinds of "alarming" requests don't have to be made again.

Agreed. I'd just be more confident if the city had promised to make all the documentation available online rather than just the requests for documentation.

John, if the response to our request is truly that huge, it would be very difficult to put it online in a reasonable time frame. That is a whole lot of scanning.

However, certain key parts of the request, should the City comply and produce them, could be put online and should be put online.

I'm sure your paper tried to get some of these same documents (at least I hope you did) and hit some roadblocks. How hard you or others (the Rhino) fought to get past that wall and what your attorney's advised you is unknown. Obviously, the City is going to assert some privileges which I have anticipated and am prepared to fight in court if need be. That is unless the City Council decides not to pursue that course of action and holds true to some campaign promises made by members and agrees to release everything.

To me there is no legal justification for not releasing the RMA. It is not a personnel file under current law. Even more inexcusable is not releasing the "black book". I have heard that the City no longer has possession of the "black book" and that is now being held by the SBI. Whether that is true remains to be seen, and if the SBI does have it citizens deserve to know why.

The Homestead documents will end up being far less than what the request calls for. Most of what we are looking for there will be memorandums, minutes and attorney communications that are no longer privileged due to the passage of time. We are not asking for every deed, mortgage, note, etc. related to Homestead.

I am happy that you and I can agree at least on this one subject. Roch, Joe and I will make available to all media outlets every document that is made available to us.

I agree that it is a good sign that the City is taking this seriously so far and appears to be making an effort to comply. I do strongly suspect however, that after our meeting next Friday there will be several items in the request that we will have to litigate in order to receive. My hope is that the City Council will be very involved in this process instead of simply letting the legal staff say "we don't have to release that". If they don't want to release something, they need to explain why. I don't think "we don't have to" is an excuse that people will accept. They may feel they don't have to, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't, and I can assure you that we will not stop until a judge or appellate court says "they don't have to".

Sorry about the moniker. I always use my true name when posting on your site. That last post slipped in under my blog i.d. by mistake.