DelCOG (and John Flaherty) informs us of something pretty alarming — that AG Biden’s office officially thinks that the Office of the Wilmington Mayor is *not* covered by FOIA. How can that be, you ask? According to the DelCOG letter, the AGs office has issued an opinion at the Wilmington Mayor’s office is not subject to FOIA because the Mayor’s office is a 1 person agency. To be fair, I have not seen the actual decision (it isn’t posted on their website that I can find), but John Flaherty is normally a very reality-based person, so I’m inclined to trust his take on this.
I can’t even begin to imagine why they’d look at the Mayor’s Office as a one person agency — except to note that if they can make this fly, they can exempt from FOIA the offices of lots of elected officials, since technically (under this criteria it seems to me) they are one person agencies. And why would a one person agency be exempt from FOIA anyway? It seems to me that the criteria for FOIA ought to be whether or not the office is doing the work of the public — not how many people the office has.
A note on the circumstances of this — while the African American Heritage Center is still tilting at windmills here (IMO), since they responded to an official RFP, it seems to me that they would want to pursue some action regarding the procurement itself if their story on the presentations is correct. But that might interfere with tilting at windmills.
Contact the AGs office and John Flaherty if you think that this is the wrong position on the applicability of FOIA to the Mayor’s office. And I’ve reposted the entire letter here:
April 12, 2012
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, III
Delaware Attorney General
820 French St.
Wilmington, DE 19802Dear Attorney General Biden:
We are writing to urge you to reconsider the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) opinion issued by Deputy Attorney General Kent Walker who stated that the Office of the Mayor of Wilmington is not a public body under FOIA because it has only one member, the Mayor himself.
Mr. Walker contends the Office of the Wilmington Mayor is a 1 person agency not covered by FOIA.
A google search for the Office of Wilmington Mayor, comes up with an office consisting of 12 smiling individuals that make up the staff for the Mayor’s Office.
I have attached the staff directory for the Office of the Mayor for your review.
As you are aware, under the Freedom of Information Act, the jurisdiction of the Attorney General is limited to the determination of whether a citizen has been denied access to public records or to meetings that were in fact conducted but either not properly noticed or not conducted in an open manner as required by Delaware law.
In a complaint submitted to the Attorney General’s Office on March 8, 2012, by the ‘African American Heritage Center of Delaware’, the Center alleged that they were denied access to a public hearing involving the Delaware Historical Society when the topic of the meeting was the spending of thousands of dollars of public monies by the Society on the establishment of a African-American museum.
It is not the purpose of this letter to take sides in a dispute between groups as to who is best positioned to operate an African-American Heritage Museum.
Rather, it is the purpose of this letter to reiterate and demand that the public has a right, under FOIA, to expect that when a public meeting is held and the agenda is the spending of thousands of dollars of tax payers monies, that meeting should be conducted in an open manner as required by Delaware law. That did not happen in this case.
We urge your personal involvement to reconsider this matter and to issue an opinion that conforms to Delaware’s Open meeting law and not an opinion based on conjecture and misunderstanding.
Sincerely,
John D. Flaherty,
President
Delaware Coalition for Open Government
712 W. 26th St.
Wilmington, DE 19802
email jdf0000@aol.com
cell 302-319-1213