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March 17, 2007

Whitley FOI Audit

By Jennifer and Ron Woody / For the Times-Tribune

Williamsburg City and Whitley County Schools were the hardest to extract public records from. Both seemed suspicious, requiring that we submit a written request with name, phone. number, address and reason why we wanted the records. They would then forward the request to their attorney and mail it to us with in three to five days.

At Whitley County I waited 20 minutes to speak to someone while she helped two people before me, even though I was there first and she knew my request, overall budget and superintendent’s contract with salary.

At the Williamsburg Schools they were very courteous and took Ron’s name and number and stated they would let him know when he could pick up the information. Twenty minutes later Dennis Byrd, Williamsburg Independent Schools Superintendent, called back and stated that he had spoken to the district’s attorney and that Ron would need to submit his request in writing and then the district would be able to consider the request.

Wouldn’t one think that the people we trust with the education and care of our children should be the most open with their information? However just the opposite was the case with the Whitley County and Williamsburg districts. One would think that a well-run district would at least be able to provide the current year’s budget upon request.

Whitley County Government was a completely different story. Upon asking the County Treasurer (I didn’t get his name, but he deserves special kudos) for a copy of Judge-Executive Pat White’s paid property tax he directed Ron to the County Sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office found no records for Pat White so Ron left to go visit the county dispatch office for an incident report. Upon receiving his incident report and leaving the courthouse the County Treasurer informed Ron that the sheriff’s office had copies of the judge-executive’s property tax records. It seems that the judge-executive’s given name is Paschal White.

Whitley County and Williamsburg were both forthcoming with copies of the most recent fiscal court and city commission meetings. Both had books available to the public in order to get copies of the minutes.

The 9-1-1 dispatch center provided an incident report for Whitley County and Williamsburg since they dispatch for both law enforcement groups.

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