toledoblade.com --

Two weeks before Toledo City Council approved the 2008 general fund operating budget Tuesday night, Councilman Joe McNamara had questions about the number of staffers working on the 22nd floor of Government Center: the mayor's office.

The Democratic councilman thought it was a simple request and easily answered.

Mr. McNamara finally got his answers Wednesday - which he said was too late to reasonably use the information.

"This document would have raised a lot of questions that we may have had about the appropriate use of funds," Mr. McNamara said. "The bottom line is there was a huge delay … and when council requests a public record, they should be able to see it as soon as possible."

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The situation is typical of the pace the Finkbeiner administration takes to provide public records to both council and the media, Mr. McNamara said.

The document Mr. McNamara received after two weeks was a one-page spreadsheet listing the name, salary, and department of the 24 people stationed on Mayor Carty Finkbeiner's floor.

The matter became an issue March 11 when Mr. McNamara had questions about the mayor's office's proposed budget, which was presented with funding for nine employees.

Brian Schwartz, spokesman for Mayor Finkbeiner, said the mayor's office has never to his knowledge purposely withheld or delayed release of a public record.

"It's really a shortage of manpower," Mr. Schwartz said. "The law says records have to be produced in a reasonable amount of time, and I don't know that's ever been defined but, while we strive to meet the letter and spirit of the law, sometimes we get bogged down with time and manpower issues."

Most records requests leaving city government go through the law department and if they concern matters of attorney-client privilege or pending real estate transactions, they are not released, Mr. Schwartz said.

Other councilmen have been hampered by delays in getting information from the Finkbeiner administration.

Republican Councilman George Sarantou said he has "on occasion not gotten the information" he wanted.

"I have been on council seven years, and I'm sure every council member at one time or another had delays in getting information," Mr. Sarantou said. "I think what happens is 22 wants to check and double-check the information that's given to council to be sure it's accurate."

Councilman Frank Szollosi, also a Democrat, said he gets stonewalled a lot.

"I get more satisfaction from a ball-peen hammer to my head," Mr. Szollosi said. "They are notoriously slow and give the absolute minimum amount of information. It's a very secretive administration."

A recent request by The Blade for a number of e-mails and executive summaries of meetings regarding an economic development project took more than two weeks to produce.

Adam Loukx, the city's chief counsel, said e-mails that are deleted must be recovered by the city's information technology department, which is a time-consuming process.

The state's open records law requires that documents be promptly prepared and made available at reasonable times during business hours.

Ohio's Public Records Act is often mistakenly seen as a tool available only to reporters looking for information about public officials or agencies. But the law gives any person the right to gain access to public information, such as reports about crime, real estate sales, and taxpayer dollars being spent by government or schools.

Mr. McNamara said he made his request for the list of employees on the mayor's floor after Mr. Finkbeiner's staff presented its proposed budget.

He said many of the employees on the floor listed under other departments perform duties for the mayor and, if so, should be funded under Mr. Finkbeiner's budget. "I wanted to know, 'What are the job duties of the people on the 22nd floor who are not paid for out of the mayor's budget?' " he said.

There are nine people under the department of development, three for the board of community relations, and the city's Web master, who serves as the mayor's spokesman when Mr. Schwartz is not in the office.

The mayor is paid $137,173 a year and three of his staff members each make more than $90,000.

Contact Ignazio Messina at:
imessina@theblade.com
or 419-724-6171.

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