UO Public Records Office doing its best to hide Tim Gleason’s docs

10/9/2017: 

According to the date stamp, this report on some of Tim Gleason’s spending as the NCAA’s Faculty Athletics Representative was pulled on Sept 25th – and that was only after they’d claimed they didn’t have any BANNER records, and made me file another request. But Kevin Reed’s Public Records Office didn’t send this to me until Oct 6th:

And now they want $84.92 to explain how much more the academic side is paying to help do the NCAA cartel’s job:

10/06/2017

Dear Mr. Harbaugh:

The University of Oregon has received your public records request for “This is a public records request for records showing the expenditures of the Faculty Athletics Representative and his office, from July 1 2010 to the present” on 09/22/2017, attached. The office has at least some documents responsive to your request. With this email, the office is providing you with an estimate to respond to your requests.

Some records have been provided to you in response to your public records request 2018-PRR-072 for “…a BANNER reports showing the expenditures of the Faculty Athletic Representative and his office, from July 1 2010 to [9/13/2017]”. However, the University possesses additional records that are responsive to your current, more general, request

The office estimates the actual cost of responding to this request to be $84.92. Upon receipt of a check made payable to the University of Oregon for that amount, the office will proceed to locate, copy, and provide the records you have requested that are not exempt from disclosure. Your check may be sent to the attention of Office of Public Records, 6207 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6207.

The university has received your request for a fee waiver for these records. The decision to waive or reduce fees is discretionary with the public body. After considering your request, the office does not consider that the totality of the circumstances you presented meets the standard for a fee waiver.

… Thank you for contacting us with your request.

Sincerely,

Office of Public Records

6207 University of Oregon | Eugene, OR 97403-6207

(541) 346-6823 | [email protected]

publicrecords.uoregon.edu

Meanwhile, it’s not clear where the HBO request for Gleason’s rhabdo docs is at. The PR office is way behind. Perhaps they’re busy with FBI search warrants?

9/22/2017: Apparently HBO has paid UO the $754.28 Tim Gleason wanted for the rhabdo docs, and presumably he’s now compiling them. I’m not sure if Gleason gets the money, or if it will go to his office and offset some of the cost to the academic budget of his FAR salary, and I’m still waiting for the docs showing just how much his FAR office is costing UO.

9/21/2017:  On Sept 13th I made a simple public records request (at bottom of post) for an accounting report that would show how much money it’s costing the academic side for UO Journalism Prof Tim Gleason’s NCAA “Faculty Athletics Representative” office. Today I got a response denying my request on the grounds that there is no such record.

Obviously UO has accounting records on what Gleason’s operation is costing us – if not someone should really tell Internal Auditor Brenda Muirhead – but apparently I didn’t use the right language to ask for them. I’ve been repeatedly told that the proper response in such situations would be for the PR Office to respond with a suggestion on how to modify the request so that it could be filled, or simply provide the records via some other query. But here at UO, our public records office just won’t miss an opportunity to delay providing public information:

9/21/2017

Dear Mr. Harbaugh,

The University has searched for, but was unable to locate, records responsive to your request for “…a BANNER report showing the expenditures of the Faculty Athletics Representative and his office, from July 1 2010 to present”, made 9/13/2017.

Please note that expenses for the Faculty Athletics Representative are not isolated to a single FOAPAL element or Index, and as such they cannot be reported on via a BANNER query.

The office considers this to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter. Thank you for contacting the office with your request.

Sincerely, [PRO Lisa Thornton]

My response, sent today:

Dear Ms Thornton:

I apologize for asking for records on the FAR office expenditures in a way that is incompatible with UO’s accounting system.

As you know, it’s good practice in a situation like this for your office to respond by giving the requestor some advice on how to get these public records, perhaps after a clarifying question or two, rather than simply denying the request.

This is a public records request for records showing the expenditures of the Faculty Athletics Representative and his office, from July 1 2010 to the present. I’d prefer a line item list with the appropriate banner codes, but if this is indeed impossible or even just difficult to produce, FY summaries showing expenditures by the usual accounting codes and titles, as in the Financial Transparency reports.

I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this request, or suggestions about how to make it in a way that is consistent with UO’s accounting records. I’m ccing Kelly Wolf, since he might, and Tim Gleason, since he must have some records of these expenditures, and Greg Stripp, since these expenditures come out of the President’s Office and he must know how you can get them and help me make them public.

Thanks, Bill Harbaugh

9/19/2017: UO Prof & FAR Tim Gleason wants to charge HBO $754 for his Duck docs

Under Oregon’s Public Records law, UO is required to address the three part test for the fee waiver I requested in mirroring HBO’s request, but they ignore that here, as has become typical. Page down for more details:

From: [email protected]
Subject: Public Records Request 2018-PRR-082
Date: September 15, 2017 at 11:52:01 AM PDT
To: [email protected]

09/15/2017

Dear Mr. Harbaugh:

The University of Oregon has received your attached public records request, made 9/15/2017, copying a request made by Jake Rosenwasser on 9/8/2017 for:

“Any records of correspondence (including but not limited to emails, text messages, internal messaging systems) to or from Oregon Faculty Athletics Representative Tim Gleason pertaining to the hospitalization of Oregon football players in January of 2017.

Any records of correspondence (including but not limited to emails, text messages, internal messaging systems) to or from Oregon Faculty Athletics Representative Tim Gleason pertaining to the report Gleason wrote in 2017 about the Oregon football strength and conditioning program and Oregon football hospitalization incident in 2017.

All notes and documentation and interview notes created by or used by Gleason as he researched and wrote his report about the Oregon football hospitalization incident of January 2017.”

With this email, the office is providing you with an estimate to respond to your requests.

The office estimates the actual cost of responding to your request to be $754.28. Upon receipt of a check made payable to the University of Oregon for that amount, the office will proceed to locate, copy, and provide the records you have requested that are not exempt from disclosure. Your check may be sent to the attention of Office of Public Records, 6207 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6207.

Please note that if the cost of preparing the documents for you is less than the estimate, we will refund the difference. If the cost of preparing the records for you exceeds the estimate, however, you may be charged for the difference. Following is an outline of how costs are determined.

The office will provide the documents electronically to avoid a copy fee of 25 cents per page. The office also charges for the actual cost of making public records available. The charge includes, but is not limited to, staff costs for locating, gathering, summarizing, compiling, reviewing, tailoring or redacting the public records to respond to a request. The charge may also include the cost of time spent by an attorney in reviewing the public records, redacting material from the public records, or segregating the public records into exempt and nonexempt records.

The cost of time for each employee is calculated by multiplying the employee’s hourly wage calculation (including benefits expenses) by the hours or portions thereof necessary to locate, gather, summarize, compile, tailor, review, redact, segregate, certify or attend the inspection of the public records requested.

Thank you for contacting us with your request.

Sincerely,

Office of Public Records
6207 University of Oregon | Eugene, OR 97403-6207
(541) 346-6823 | [email protected]
publicrecords.uoregon.edu

9/12/2017: HBO sports’ Bryant Gumbel requests Duck FAR Tim Gleason’s rhabdo docs

Update: a helpful reader just sent me this redacted copy of Gleason’s rhabdo report. Not much meat.

Bryant Gumbel is a journalist.

Tim Gleason is a onetime photographer for an obscure Long Island newspaper, a former UO journalism dean, a journalism professor, the Director of the Abigail Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism, and the Duck’s “Faculty Athletics Representative”. Former UO Pres Mike Gottfredson appointed him to the later job over the objections of the UO Senate, shortly before the UO Trustees paid Gottfredson $940K to leave. Our academic budget pays Gleason ~$120K in salary, plus free sports tickets and travel expenses for away games:

Last winter Gleason wrote a report for President Schill about the rhabdo incident that led to the hospitalization of 3 football players, after a workout that was supervised by new Coach Willie Taggart’s strength and conditioning coach Irele Oderinde. While UO’s General Counsel’s Office tried to hide Oderinde’s resume from CBS sports by claiming he was “faculty”, it soon came out that Oderinde did not have the recommended certification from the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association.

Despite this, Gleason assured the Senate that all was well. I don’t recall him mentioning that the Duck’s Director of Athletic Medicine, Greg Skaggs, also does not have the recommended board certification in Sports Medicine. The video of Gleason’s explanation to the Senate is here, he starts sometime after 1:30.

Here’s the new public records request, from HBO Sports: