- By Dan Veaner
- News
Print 
Bahar has spoken against the sewer at several meetings, and is behind the nolansingsewers.com Web site that he developed to be a focus for sewer opponents. He has publicly challenged the project and the motivations behind it, the environmental justification, and the cost of the $18.2 million project. He has written against the project more than once in this and other publications. Last week he was approached by the Star for comment, but was ill and unable to respond in time for this story.
Bahar's request is the second FOIL request by opponents of initiatives that would raise Lansing taxes. The first was brought against the Lansing Central School District by David Dubin, who opposed the capital improvement project that failed BY 16 votes last month. That request stirred district officials to develop a policy on dealing with FOIL requests that includes definitions of records that can be requested, duplication fees and procedures, and forms for requesting documents.
FOIL is a New York State version of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that allows individuals access to public records. All records are included unless an exception is allowed. In that case the agency can refuse to provide the excepted records. Most exceptions are based on the potential for harm that might arise from their disclosure. For example paychecks with employees' personal information on them could be excepted to protect the privacy of those individuals.
The Town can charge 25 cents for up to standard legal sized documents and cost for oversized documents such as maps, color reproductions to recover costs. Krogh says that Bahar requested that everything be scanned into PDF format and burned onto a CD and delivered to him, evidently to circumvent the charge for reproducing materials. "I took the liberty of explaining that FOIL has a specific provision that says the Town can recover its costs," Krogh says.
The law provides that the request must be specific, and according to Krogh the general nature of Bahar's request allows the Town to deny much of it. "It was basically a blanket request, and FOIL doesn't answer blanket requests," Krogh explained. "It doesn't require you to turn over inter-agency materials that don't lead to a decision. You couldn't, for example, submit a FOIL request to the Federal government and say 'Give me all communications between the ATF and the IRS concerning taxes. That's not what FOIL does, that's not what FOIA does."
But Krogh characterized the request as problematic, because some of what it asks for is legitimate. "It still requires the production of ten years of Town board minutes," he said. "That is a proper request."
FOIL requires a response within 20 days, and if that timetable is not possible the Town is required to give notice. Krogh says that Town Clerk Bonnie Boles thinks she can compile the minutes within 20 days. "If not we'll send a notice to the gentleman," Krogh said.
"We requested that (Boles) keep track of the time that we're spending doing that," Shattuck said. "Whenever it comes up that you want to talk about frivolous waste of time for government officials, this FOIL request would be at the top of that list."
----
v3i10