We have readers north of the border and a public information request done right.

It looks like our public information request story from last Friday caught the attention of Bob Norman from the Broward/Palm Beach edition of the New Times, from his article yesterday...

-- Have you ever tried to get public records from your government? Florida's Sunshine Law dictates that your wonderful and dedicated public servants should be reasonable and timely in supplying you the information. But that's not the way it works. The awful and terrible School Board, for instance, almost always tries to hit the public up with several hundred dollars in costs, especially stuff that people don't want to let out. It's just another sign of arrogance. But few compare to a recent case involving a Miami blog. The Straw Buyer requested from the Miami-Dade Police Department emails between a prosecutor and a detective in a well-publicized mortgage fraud case. Simple enough, it would seem, with one sender and one recipient. I could find that information on my email account in about 12 seconds.
Well, I'm not a governmental entity. After the jump, see how much the PD said it would cost to retrieve those emails.
Answer: $484,218.46.
That's right, nearly half a million dollars to find emails between one prosecutor and one detective involving one criminal case.
So how did they break that incredible cost down?
Using who knows what algorithm, Lt. Kathi Miller of the Economic Crimes Bureau determined that it would take 194 days to find the emails. The cost per day to "retrieve mailbox data": $2,495.97.
Multiply those two numbers and it comes to $484,218.46.
See, it all makes sense after all.

Brilliant, thanks for the mention Mr. Norman.

Now, we've mentioned Al Crespo of the Crespo-Gram report before, Mr. Crespo seems to  have a much better handle of the Florida Sunshine Law and public information requests than we do.  Recently Mr. Crespo submitted a public information request for emails from City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff's personal email accounts, at first he was turned down then today we're told that he just received 8,533 emails as a result of his public information request.  

What gives?  We ask for what can't be more than a dozen or so emails and are nailed with a nearly $500,000 bill and Mr. Crespo gets 8,533 emails at no cost?  Looks like we're not done with this public information request business and we'll certainly be taking up Mr. Crespo on his his offer on how to submit them and get results.


Till Monday folks, have a great weekend...

The Florida Sunshine law, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG JACKASS!

Here in the great state of Florida we have something called the "Sunshine Law", it goes something like this...

The "Sunshine" Law

119.01 General state policy on public records -
(1) It is the policy of this state that all state, county, and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person. Providing access to public records is a duty of each agency.

— Florida Statute, Chapter 119.01

This is a fantastic law that opens up the governments files to the public, I've watched over the last several years as several different scandals have unfolded as a result of the people being allowed to go through these public records, most recently, I've watched first hand as Al Crespo of the Crespo-Gram Report has unearthed several sensitive documents regarding the shenanigans at the City of Miami through just such a public information request.  I figure, it's time to make a public records request, I started off by asking for some emails between the lead Detective in the Barrera Mortgage fraud case, Jorge Baluja and the assistant state attorney who prosecuted the case, Bill Kostrzewski.  Here's what I got back...

Ok, I'm a fair person, no one works for free and after all, it'll take a few minutes to go ahead and access the email accounts I requested, search the emails and put them together in a new email or even print them, put them in an envelope and send them out to me, no problem.  So I get to the next page in order to see how much I have to send the county for these records and I get this...

WHAT THE FCUK?!  

FOUR HUNDRED EIGHTY FOUR THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED EIGHTEEN DOLLARS AND 46 CENTS?!  I knew things were bad over at the county but HALF A MILLION DOLLARS to produce some emails?  That's just for seven months of emails between a cop and a prosecutor on ONE CASE!  Can you imagine if I asked for two years worth of emails?  Honestly, anyone can do the work required for this public information request in less than 15 minutes, what the hell is going on here?  Looks like it's time to lawyer up!