{"id":2532,"date":"2011-01-03T14:24:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T19:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/stonewalling-costs-erie-county-ny.html"},"modified":"2011-01-03T14:24:28","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T19:24:28","slug":"stonewalling-costs-erie-county-ny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/stonewalling-costs-erie-county-ny.html","title":{"rendered":"Stonewalling costs Erie County, NY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/eriecountygov.org\/prison\/accountinfo.aspx\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"225\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/eriecountygov.org\/dept\/prison\/prison2.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nMatthew Spina writes in the Buffalo News,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.buffalonews.com\/city\/article299698.ece\"><br \/>\nFighting jail suit was costly to county:<br \/>\nBill for protecting records tops $27,000<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe Chris Collins team last summer tried to block the New York Civil<br \/>\nLiberties Union\u2019s attempt to find out how much Erie County spends<br \/>\nfending off jail-related lawsuits.<\/p>\n<p>\nCollins\u2019 county attorney at the time, Cheryl A. Green, refused to turn<br \/>\nover a trove of county records that would answer the Civil Liberties<br \/>\nUnion\u2019s questions. She was then brought into court and thumped so<br \/>\nsoundly Erie County was ordered to both turn over the documents and pay<br \/>\nthe opposition\u2019s legal fees.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut Erie County also was paying $250 an hour to an outside law firm in<br \/>\nits effort to keep those public records from public view. With that bill<br \/>\nrecently paid, the cost of the failed Collins-Green stonewall can now<br \/>\nbe tallied: $27,523.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/exec\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/frog_095_exec\/public\/images\/collins.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nThat\u2019s enough to have continued county grants in 2011 to, say, the<br \/>\nBuffalo City Ballet, Road Less Traveled Productions, El Museo Gallery<br \/>\nand the Community Music School of Buffalo \u2014 all among the dozens of<br \/>\nnonprofit arts providers Collins froze out of his 2011 budget.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Chris Collins is<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/exec\/\"><br \/>\nErie County Executive<\/a>.<br \/>\nErie County is much more populous (about 930,000 people)<br \/>\nthan Lowndes County or Valdosta, but some of its problems<br \/>\nseem eerily familiar.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe article just keeps getting better.<br \/>\nErie County ran up twice as much in legal expenses astheACLU,<br \/>\nand ended up having to pay both sets of legal fees.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.erie.gov\/comptroller\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"    src=\"http:\/\/www.erie.gov\/comptroller\/graphics\/poloncarz.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\n\u201cIf we had just provided the data in the first place, we would have<br \/>\nsaved $18,000 for the outside counsel for the county and $9,000 for the<br \/>\nCivil Liberties Union,\u201d said Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, whose staff<br \/>\nissues the checks. \u201cAll we had to do was be transparent upfront. This<br \/>\nfollows a pattern of the administration not being open and rejecting<br \/>\nrequests for information not just from the public but from our office.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Transparency up front: there&#8217;s an idea for local governments here.<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Spina writes in the Buffalo News, Fighting jail suit was costly to county: Bill for protecting records tops $27,000 The Chris Collins team last summer tried to block the New York Civil Liberties Union\u2019s attempt to find out how much Erie County spends fending off jail-related lawsuits. Collins\u2019 county attorney at the time, Cheryl [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,72],"tags":[3658,8699,8730,8700],"class_list":["post-2532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-incarceration","tag-foia","tag-government","tag-incarceration","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}