Dean Logan, who promises "transparency and public access", draws the line at actually giving the public access to information that is potentially embarrassing to himself and Ron Sims. The Amazing Transparent Man continues to stonewall my public records requests. Here's Dean Logan's latest letter to me, an amazing display of non-transparency (background info follows). Status on my public disclosure lawsuit: the attorney is preparing a complaint which he hopes will be ready to file later this week. Any contribution you can make to help me sue Ron Sims to compel disclosure of all requested documents will be greatly appreciated. [oops, sorry. the link to Logan's latest letter was broken, but it's now fixed]

I have a number of long-outstanding unfulfilled records requests that will be mentioned in the complaint. But this one is perhaps the most egregious violation of the Public Disclosure Act. To recap -- On July 5 I submitted a records request asking to examine a number of original absentee ballot envelopes from the November 2004 election. Logan's response of July 14 was that he didn't want to let me see the original envelopes, but would only release copies. Copies are less than satisfactory to me, as they conceal information that is on the originals, take longer to produce and cost more money. However, Logan promised that if I wanted copies of all returned absentee ballot envelopes to let him know and he would "determine our expected timeline to make those documents available for your inspection".

I wrote back on July 18 asking for all of the returned absentee ballot envelopes, to be released incrementally and in a specifc order so I could examine the ballots I was most interested in first. Logan finally replied, with this letter of August 11, weeks after the 5-day statutory deadline had passed, saying he estimates it will take four months to release all of the copies and that he might or might not have some ready to release to me before then, and not necessarily in the order in which I've requested them. In other words, Dean Logan is spending in the neighborhood of $90,000 in taxpayer funds to make photocopies in order to prevent me from seeing the originals and to slow down the process. Obviously, he wants to slow this down to the point that the information on how badly he botched the processing of absentee ballots last year is concealed from the public long enough that it can't hurt his boss Ron Sims' re-election campaign.

So now its up to me to go to court to sue while the Sims/Logan transparency machine has its own taxpayer-funded lawyer to fend off my suit. Please help me sue Ron Sims to shine a light on his sordid elections department and bring real transparency not just the phoney-baloney Dean Logan-style transparency