Poof!
Their file on the controversial Talgo no-bid contract disappeared like a tiger at a Copperfield show. Citizens for Responsible Government in May requested access to the file and other documents to see if taxpayers got ripped off when the $48 million no-bid train contract went to the Spanish company and not a Wisconsin firm.
The train cars will be used on the $800 million high-speed rail line being forced on Wisconsin citizens.
Presto. Change-o. One-two-three. Gonnnnnnnnne.
“We do believe there was a folder of official correspondence via letters that we have been unable to locate,” wrote Commerce legal counsel Laura M. Varriale in an email to CRG. For over two months, “Both the Executive Secretary and I have been looking for the letters we believe were in a file, but have been unable to locate them yet.” Varriale is the records custodian for the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.
CRG fought back.
In a strongly worded letter, CRG demanded that Wisconsin Commerce Secretary Aaron Olver produce the file.
“We are prepared to take all appropriate legal steps if such actions are required. As the statute so eloquently notes, ‘a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate … all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the … official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.”
Governor Jim Doyle gave Talgo the contract after he went to Spain on a “trade mission” in 2009 shortly before he announced he would not seek re-election. Wisconsin-based Super Steel – a train manufacturer – was not allowed to bid on the project to build the rail cars.
CRG’s letter to Olver rips the Houdini’s at the Commerce Department for depriving the public access to the information about their government and use of tax dollars:
“Losing” the file regarding the signature issue of Governor Doyle’s economic, transportation and green agendas raises serious questions about the process of awarding a contract to Talgo. We are entitled to know what methods you used to locate the file, including who you talked with, who was contacted and what files were searched. We and the public are entitled to a clear explanation of exactly what steps are ongoing to locate this most sensitive and important file. To the extent the file cannot be located, then surely we and the public are entitled to a description of the documents and correspondence that you believe were in the file. We reiterate our demand that the Department produce all relevant documents specified in our original request and, additionally, disclose the procedures used to locate those documents, and what efforts are ongoing to reproduce the missing file.
We’re not buying it . . .
"It strains credulity to believe that the Wisconsin Department of Commerce has 'lost' a file of correspondence so critical to this $800 million project. We know that there was, in fact, correspondence regarding the decision to back a foreign firm over a Wisconsin employer. We are now apparently expected to accept that all those decisions were legitimate, thought-through, economically sensible decisions, when exactly the opposite may be true. An entire delegation of Wisconsin officials went to Spain to negotiate a deal and we now have no official correspondence that led to the formulation of that deal because it is supposedly 'lost.' We can certainly all agree that such convenient disappearance cannot help but raise suspicions."
At every good magic show, the magician brings back tiger, the jumbo jet, or lady in the sequin gown.
So it is with the magicians at Commerce. Hiring an attorney, threatening a lawsuit and notifying a reporter made "a" file appear. The Associated Press is reporting that the bureaucrats at Commerce “FOUND” "a" file. We say “a” file because we cannot be sure it is “THE” file.
A government agency that claims to have looked for a file for over two months only to find it when faced with a CRG lawsuit cannot be trusted. What was in the file when it was “LOST?” What is in the file today?
Finding what government wants to hide is what CRG was created to do. What would have happened if the request came from a group that hadn’t spent the last decade in these fights or was not able to hire a lawyer? In short, what would the result have been if a citizen had tried to exercise their rights?
CRG Open Records Request
CRG Open Records Demand Letter
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