{"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":"<a href=\"http:\/\/eriecountygov.org\/prison\/accountinfo.aspx\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"225\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/eriecountygov.org\/dept\/prison\/prison2.jpg\"><\/a>\nMatthew Spina writes in the Buffalo News,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.buffalonews.com\/city\/article299698.ece\">\nFighting jail suit was costly to county:\nBill for protecting records tops $27,000<\/a>\n<blockquote>\nThe Chris Collins team last summer tried to block the New York Civil\nLiberties Union\u2019s attempt to find out how much Erie County spends\nfending off jail-related lawsuits.\n<p>\nCollins\u2019 county attorney at the time, Cheryl A. Green, refused to turn\nover a trove of county records that would answer the Civil Liberties\nUnion\u2019s questions. She was then brought into court and thumped so\nsoundly Erie County was ordered to both turn over the documents and pay\nthe opposition\u2019s legal fees.\n<p>\nBut Erie County also was paying $250 an hour to an outside law firm in\nits effort to keep those public records from public view. With that bill\nrecently paid, the cost of the failed Collins-Green stonewall can now\nbe tallied: $27,523.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<!--more-->\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/exec\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/frog_095_exec\/public\/images\/collins.jpg\"><\/a>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nThat\u2019s enough to have continued county grants in 2011 to, say, the\nBuffalo City Ballet, Road Less Traveled Productions, El Museo Gallery\nand the Community Music School of Buffalo \u2014 all among the dozens of\nnonprofit arts providers Collins froze out of his 2011 budget.\n<\/blockquote>\nChris Collins is\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wwww.erie.gov\/exec\/\">\nErie County Executive<\/a>.\nErie County is much more populous (about 930,000 people)\nthan Lowndes County or Valdosta, but some of its problems\nseem eerily familiar.\n<p>\nThe article just keeps getting better.\nErie County ran up twice as much in legal expenses astheACLU,\nand ended up having to pay both sets of legal fees.\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.erie.gov\/comptroller\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"    src=\"http:\/\/www.erie.gov\/comptroller\/graphics\/poloncarz.jpg\"><\/a>\n\u201cIf we had just provided the data in the first place, we would have\nsaved $18,000 for the outside counsel for the county and $9,000 for the\nCivil Liberties Union,\u201d said Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, whose staff\nissues the checks. \u201cAll we had to do was be transparent upfront. This\nfollows a pattern of the administration not being open and rejecting\nrequests for information not just from the public but from our office.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nTransparency up front: there&#8217;s an idea for local governments here.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"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"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-EQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_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}]}}