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West Virginia Won't Release Broadband Report Because It Is 'Embarrassing'
An anonymous reader writes "The Charleston Gazette is reporting that the state of West Virginia hired a consulting firm for over $100,000 to investigate the state's use of Federal stimulus money (which included the purchase of $22,000 routers for tiny buildings). Unfortunately, the state government is now refusing a FOIA request to release the firm's report. The reason? The findings 'might be embarrassing to some people,' according to Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette."
Replace the word 'embarassing' with 'incriminating'.
This is a good example of what we'll lose if and when big city daily papers go under, and are replaced by national/international news outfits with makeshift and/or crowdsourced local staffs.
So isn't this the purpose of the General Services Administration? To streamline the process of fulfilling the needs of agencies such as these so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen? Let me guess, someone approved a PO and bought the equipment from a friend who sold it to them at a high commission.
Oddly enough the company that wrote the report, the ICF, was the same company hired by the Department of Agricultural (Federal) to evaluate the broadband stimulus applications and track the progress of the companies receiving loans and grant. If West Virginia is ignoring the foia request, perhaps a request to the feds will break things loose.
Just declare all governance an embarrassment and avoid the need for transparency.
Genius!
it never works out. They don't even need to publish a report to tell me how awful and expensive it is.
how is that even a legal reason to refuse a Freedom of Information request? Last I checked, "we don't want to" isn't an acceptable reason to refuse.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
He's making the FOIA lawsuit a complete slam dunk for the EFF, ACLU, or whoever files it.
The company that wrote the report for WV, ICF, is the same company that did the evaluations of the broadband stimulus grant and loan applications, and is heading up the auditing of the deployments. If WV is ignoring the foia requests, I would imagine the request could be sent to the Feds since it's their money.
of a lot of jokes. Yeah, they screwed up... Again. However, most people don't know that West Virgina was part of Virginia up until the Civil War. They believed so strongly in free labor (as opposed to slave labor) that they succeeded from their state. I can forgive them for a lot of crap after that. It's sad seeing them struggle over basic internet access, but I think it's always been a challenge in WV.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
That's not a legitimate reason to refuse request under FOIA.
In fact, it's explicitly not a legitimate reason.
They asked if "whiskey stills" can be considered internet routers. As soon as their lawyers sober up we should have an answer.
No. Really.
West Virginian here. It is very embarrassing. Unless you live a couple miles away from the interstate, good luck on finding an ISP delivering more than 5 megabits down, if that. If you're one of the lucky ones, 25Mb is the high-falutin', rip-roarin', dad-gum best it gets. My cell phone often gets faster speeds than my cable connection, and your choices there are Comcast, Suddenlink, or Frontier. Huntington was in the running for Google Fiber, and had we won, it could have sparked a sort of a renaissance in this area. But instead we were too afraid of change, too paranoid of the future, too lazy to make a difference.
Thanks for running this story. Maybe lighting a fire under their ass will encourage them to lay down some fiber. At least I wouldn't have to worry about the internet going out because some methhead is stealing copper down the street.
I won't be embarrassing for long because they'll feel different emotions after getting fired.
If the federal government was going to bring broadband to West Virginia, they should have gone in and installed it. Handing money to a Red State government for technology is like handing the remote control to your dog.
Come to think of it, I'd expect more from the dog.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I was looking for a new state to settle down and West Virginia's wireless coverage maps looked like that nighttime photo of North Korea. I took that to be representative of their communications infrastructure and eliminated WV from my list.
West Virginia, then South Ohio...
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
They're related to possums?
Love it! 126 million, and last time I was still topped out at 25kbps....
Any part of the Appalachians had few slaves. The slave economy only made sense down on the flats. Mountain people tended to have smaller farms and a more subsistence agriculture as opposed to large commercial operations.
The mountain regions of other Southern states came along for the ride in name only. Some of these areas are so remote that it just wasn't worth bothering. These are the kinds of places where they grow pot, and before that it was moonshine. If a boy wanted to fight, he came down out of the hills. I doubt they came up to get them.
They did a great job of taking millions of dollars of people's private property, then wasting it, didn't they. I guess if by "protect" you mean "take away and throw away" ...
Please correct me if I am wrong ...
If anyone file an FOIA request for some document, the authority has to comply ... except when the information released can lead to national security, or do harm to someone's life (like name of spy, or something)
That is why the authority retains the right to redact the documents they release
If W.V. decides to NOT release anything on the ground of it's "embarrassing" (or even as the GP has stated, "incriminating"), then they (the W.V. government) is in direct violation of the FOIA act.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What does this even mean?
Where did "blow up [a] phone" come from?
The thread you're looking for is a couple of stories over...
Jesus Christ... That's exactly the purpose of the freedom of information movement - to ensure that public institutions that do stupid or embarrassing things have to account for them publicly.
It's like refusing to investigate a crime because you might uncover someone's criminal activity...
Life needs more saving throws.
I figured it meant an avalanche of journalists calling with such an intensity that the phone explodes. I like the expression.
I suspect it's going to be a lot more embarrassing when a lawsuit forces WV to release the report, at which point we'll also have a good idea of who was actively trying to suppress it in the first place.
Although I can't speak to the West Virginia FOIA laws, I know that during FOIA training for Federal Government employees we are specifically told that, although there are some justafiable reasons for withholding information, "embarrassment" (or even "incrimination") are not amongst them.
I'm kinda tired of seeing the 22k figure throw around and being called the cost of the routers, which implies that the state paid 22k for just a router. They is pretty lazy journalism.
The routers themselves did not cost 22k each. The cost of buying all 1,064 routers and installing them came out to be 24 million but that does not mean that each router costs 22k. It cost 22k per router to buy it, to pay techs to install it, to pay for gas to transport techs to install it, and no doubt to pay Verizon some middle-man cut.
Keep in mind that these were installed across the state. So more likely than not, the overtime and gas to transport all the techs all over the state was a huge expense. It's not as though the state gave Verizon 24 million dollars and then Verizon dumped a few pallets of Cisco routers on the state's doorstep.
Was it a wise choice? No. But it's also not wise to completely ignore the huge logistical undertaking involved in installing routers across an entire state. A project like that would have still cost millions and millions of dollars regardless of the simple cost of the router.
Actually, West Virginia disowned Virginia. WV broke away from Virginia during the Civil War because the people of WV did not support slavery.
Admittedly, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's not a valid FOIA exception...
I imagine that, eventually, someone's gonna swing for this mess. Denying a FOIA request isn't going to change that. ;)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Oh come now, West Virginia - it's a little late to start worrying about being an embarrassment...
I found a different typo: delete the words "won't release broadband report because it" and you have the correct summary.
What does this even mean?
Where did "blow up [a] phone" come from?
You've really never heard that expression? What are you 80?
Isn't "it might be embarrassing" one of the main reasons FOIA requests exist? Seriously, if they aren't doing anything illegal or embarrassingly stupid, there would be no/little need for FIOA requests. Their refusal to disclose the information sound quite illegal in this case.
I've never heard it. <shrug>
I haven't hit 60 yet.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Well then just carry on then.
I used to be
File a FOIA request for the salaries of each city employee in your city and see how they handle a FOIA request. They will either produce tons of paper and not give the answer or tell you are not entitled to the information then you must come up with the money to fight it in court. Is the legal system working?
Maybe the term is only familiar in retail and customer service? When a customer or client makes repeated, urgent (to them) phone calls to you in rapid succession, it's referred to as "blowing up your phone". Or, if you are the one answering the phone at the IT help desk when the internet connection goes down, your phone WILL get blown up. As in, never stops ringing, rings again the instant you hang up, etc.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
to have too much broadband? might as well argue that a state has too much highway
That could be. The term does sound evocative, but I don't work in a very phone oriented position, so I may not have been exposed to it.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.