PPA’s Bike Lane Enforcement
I bike commute between West Philly and Center City pretty much every day. I do not think there has ever been a time I was able to make my 3.5 mile trip without at least one car blocking a bike lane somewhere along the way. It’s frustrating! I don’t want to get hit by a car in the traffic lane as I pass some car blocking the bike lane! I often take a photo of these problem areas and send them to the city council member responsible for that part of the city. But what happens from there? Do other people contact their city council representative about this? Do city council members actually contact the PPA about your concerns? What does the PPA do in response?
The RTKL Request:
I submitted a RTKL request to the Philadelphia Parking Authority asking for:
A copy of all correspondence between the PPA and the the staff/offices of City Council members Kenyatta Johnson, Jamie Gauthier, Darrell Clarke, Mark Squilla, Curtis Jones Jr., Cindy Bass, Anthony Phillips, Brian O'Neill, Kendra Brooks, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Helen Gym, Derek Green, Maria Quinones-Sanchez, Cherelle Parker, and/or Isiah Thomas (including correspondence to/from the councilmembers themselves) sent or received from 6/1/22 to present relating to bike lane enforcement.
The PPA’s Initial Response:
The PPA didn’t seem to understand what I meant by “the staff/offices of City Council members…” They just searched for emails to/from the actual City Council members themselves. It appears that Mark Squilla is the only councilmember who directly deals with this type of constituent concern. But he’s a fairly prolific emailer!
The Appeal:
I filed an appeal to the Office of Open Records because the PPA failed to search for communications from the “staff/offices of City Council members”. The OOR agreed that I’m right and directed the PPA to go back and look for all of the emails:
In response, the PPA conducted a revised search, which they claim yielded more than 30,000 potentially responsive emails. They said that they redacted or withheld some documents “under the ‘drafts’ and ‘constituent communications’ statutory exemptions.”
If someone is claiming a statutory exemption applies but they don’t cite to any statute, you should question whether they are making things up. In this case, they definitely were! Section 708(b)(29) of the RTKL exempts from disclosure “[c]orrespondence between a person and a member of the General Assembly and records accompanying the correspondence…”. But this exemption does not apply to communications between constituents and municipal elected official such as a Philadelphia City Council member. And there is no general “drafts” exemption in the RTKL. The RTKL exempts draft bills (§ 708(b)(9)), and draft agency meeting minutes (§ 708(b)(21)), but there is no statutory exemption for “drafts” generally.
The PPA said they “engaged at great time (400-600 hours) and cost, the law firm Clark Hill, PLC to perform an extensive examination of the documents.” Side quest: I had to find out how much the PPA spent on all this. I submitted RTKL requests for Clark Hill’s invoices on the matter.
June 2023: $1780 (7.9 hours total from two lawyers)
July 2023: $17,720.50 (73 hours! plus e-discovery fees)
Total: $19,500.50
The PPA’s representation to the OOR that they had to engage outside counsel for “400-600 hours” was not accurate! But 80 hours is still a big expense. I wonder if they ever considered contacting me to see if we could mutually agree on a revised set of search terms to make the process less burdensome/expensive? I’m an extremely reasonable records requester who likes to work things out in mediation when possible. Often to my own inconvenience! I am pretty shocked they just went down this path! And shocked that this outside counsel didn’t advise the PPA that the exemptions cited in their letter had no statutory basis.
I wrote back to the PPA after they provided me improperly redacted records, and they agreed to send me a revised PDF. Of course, they should leave personally identifying information like addresses and home phone numbers redacted, pursuant to Section 708(b)(6) of the RTKL. But they can’t redact non-exempt parts of emails just because they think the substance of that part of the email is not responsive to my request. Here’s some highlights, with the full set of mostly unredacted emails at the end:
the PPA literally telling Councilmember Mark Squilla to go submit a RTKL request….?
Councilmember Gauthier’s office actually takes these constituent complaints seriously and contacts the PPA on their behalf!
not 100% sure what this is about but there’s some interesting back-and-forth with a lobbyist who appears to be working on behalf of auto dealers near the airport? why is the ppa so deferential to this group?
Councilmember Johnson’s office unsurprisingly advocates for people to be able to park in the bike lane. They basically ignored my email asking if there was anything they could do to keep the bike lanes in District 1 clear. No surprise there.
I got emails from the offices of Councilmembers Gauthier, Squilla, and Johnson only. Either the PPA didn’t properly search for other offices’ records (very possible), or people in other city council districts aren’t contacting their councilmembers about these issues. Or if they are, the councilmembers are flat-out ignoring them. I love the RTKL but it really just gets you access to existing documents, and can’t answer all questions! I already had a lot of respect for my city council member Jamie Gauthier but now that I see her office takes constituent input about bike infrastructure seriously I am even more impressed.
Here’s the full set of emails: