8/1/2013 update: That was back in April, for the Jan, Feb and March invoices.
Now UO is stonewalling again. Almost 2 months since I asked Dave Hubin and Randy Geller for the April, May, and June invoices for Rudnick, and the other firms advising the admin bargaining team. The DOJ PR manual says 2 weeks, start to finish, is a reasonable time to wait for the documents. It took more than a month just to get an estimate from UO. I paid the $214.50 2 weeks ago – thanks for your contributions. No documents yet, and no response to follow up emails. So I’ve filed another petition with Lane County DA Alex Gardner’s office:
It has now been more than 7 weeks since I made this public records request, and 2 weeks since I paid the fee requested by UO’s Public Records Office.
I have not received any documents. UO PR Officer Lisa Thornton, her supervisor Dave Hubin, and UO General Counsel Randy Geller have not responded to follow up emails. The 7/2 response from UO’s PR office denies my fee waiver request, but does not explain why.
Therefore this is a petition to Lane County DA Alex Gardner, asking that he
a) treat this delay as a denial and order UO to produce these invoices without further delay, and
b) order UO to provide an explanation for their fee waiver denial that is consistent with the requirement of Oregon’s public records law.
4/11/2013: After the Bellotti affair it really shouldn’t be necessary to hassle the UO President about getting his general counsel to obey Oregon’s public records law. But apparently it is.
20 days and $300 after making the request, and 8 hours after sending the email below, I finally got the rather erratically redacted invoices showing how much UO has paid Dave Frohnmayer’s HLGR firm to negotiate with the UO faculty union. Full dump
here – if you see anything interesting let me know. More on this later, but here’s a snippet from the hefty January bill. Looks like Dave’s giving us a discount from his usual $550 rate:
From: Bill Harbaugh
Subject: Fwd: fee for HLGR invoices
Date: April 11, 2013 9:24:53 AM PDT
To: Michael Gottfredson
Cc: Randy Geller
, doug park , Kron Michael Michael C , PERLOW Patty , Sharon Rudnick , Robert Kyr , Margaret Paris
Dear President Gottfredson:
I’m writing to ask you to direct your General Counsel’s office to quickly produce the invoices for the law firms advising your administration on union bargaining. As you can see from the email below, I requested the documents more than two weeks ago, and I promptly paid the $300 fee.
UO’s public records office was originally established by President Lariviere with direct reporting to him, after the previous General Counsel got in trouble for not responding to requests. Lariviere noted the obvious conflict of interest in giving the General Counsel’s office the ability to delay responses to public records requests that involved its own activities. The GC’s delays in responding to public records requests about the Bellotti contracts ultimately cost UO a lot of money and credibility.
I think this is an example of the same sort of thing happening again. I ask that you instruct your GC to fill this request promptly, and that you establish procedures ensuring that the Public Records Office has sufficient power to avoid future instances of these delaying tactics.
Thanks,
Bill Harbaugh
P.19 “email from B. Airbag re: UO Matters.”
Download it and search for Espy. WTF?
so Espy’s name is there. what’s your problem?
Who is this Daniel Julius consultant?
Is it this guy?
http://www.govst.edu/uploadedFiles/Presidential_Search/julius_daniel_resume2.pdf
Page 11 UOMatters also gets mentioned.
So there’s at least two mentions of UOMatters — .2 hr each. Assuming (charitably) that it was the $75/hr worker stuck dealing with that, UOMatters ran up $30 of UO’s union fighting efforts. A bit shy the cost of one scotch bottle.
Espy and Bean show up periodically; no mention of Gottfredson that I see — way to keep him involved.
On second thought, I should have said “no mention of Gottfredson — that’s probably a good thing.”
Rough calculations based off the totals
Rudnick: $132,492.36 ($55797.38 for February alone)
Julius (for 2 days!): $13,997.05
Hirschfeld Kraemer: $19,056.90
Grand total for 4 months: $165,546.31
One of the unredacted items shows that each bargaining session seems to run around $2500. (from Feb 7, where according to Mr. B. Airbag’s live blog, had Rudnick attending).
Any comparison with union costs for getting this negotiated?
UO is paying Frohnmayer to teach, and paying Harrang to pay Frohnmayer to fight the UO faculty union. Confusing.
No it’s not.
DF is working both sides of the street! What a gig!
Frohnmayer is not working on, or being paid for, the union case.
Really? His name is on the invoices, right next to a blacked out box for his billable hours and another blacked out box for the amount paid for him. I suppose it’s possible those are hiding zeros – but then why list him on the invoices? The other names are far from an exhaustive list of HLGR attorneys,
Frohnmayer’s bar is longer than Schmidt’s. Not that length matters.
But size does.
As for union costs of negotiations, aren’t their negotiators salaried staff of AAUP and AFT-OR? As such everything done related to negotiations isn’t a billable item, or am I incorrect in this assumption?
p. 17 Train attorney K. Grado. Train them what, didn’t they do that in school?
President Gottfredson: State Stooge.
I still hold out hope for Gottfredson. We hired him to get us an independent board, he’s doing it. Lariviere failed at that one. It’s politics, of course he’s going to lie about what’s happening and how he’s doing it. When it’s over, he’ll naturally turn his attention to JH. He’s already got rid of Bean – another thing Lariviere failed at. Not so happy about how he’s handled the union negotiations or public records though.