"NO GO" 's Attempt to Make Public Record Access Harder
Here's today's Comet article on Phillip "NO GO" Gouaux's attempt to shield his photogenic master from scrutiny by the public.

The reason one of my public records requests took "40 hours to compile" is that 39 of those hours were spent illegally censoring the documents they provided me and one hour on copying.

In total, I was provided approximately 550 pages of documents in response to my various public record requests, over half of which were either duplicates or not responsive to my requests. Anyone with any experience with a copier knows copying 275 pages should take no more than one hour. If the time it took to "compile" these documents was other than copying, then the problem is either with the Randolph Administration's inefficient filing system or their need to keep certain public information secret and not because of an overly burdensome public request for records.

In any event, the reason I requested copies instead of asking to examine the documents on the premises was to decrease the burden of having a member of the public flipping through hundreds of pages over several hours while disrupting the normal flow of administrative business. By asking for copies, I trusted them, quite naively, to do the right thing and provide me copies that were responsive to my requests so that I could examine them on my own time. Instead I received highly censored documents and much irrelevant material.

What Lafourche Parish should do is lower its copy fee to 25 cents, the same amount charged by Terrebonne Parish and DEQ. Otherwise, the Council is simply trying to discourage us from accessing information to which we are clearly entitled.