5—Petitioners’ Prehearing
On July 30, 2001, after Petitioners had filed their Petition, Mr. Jacobs
sent Plaintiffs a letter along with copies of some of the documents that
Petitioners had been requesting for roughly four months. See Exhibit 5,
July 30, 2001 letter from Bernie Jacobs to Brenda Lindlief Hall. Although
some of the documents MDOL finally provided were in part responsive to
Petitioners requests, many of Petitioners’ requests have still not been
met. Moreover, Petitioners request to inspect and copy documents has
never been complied with. Petitioners have only been provided selective
information. Finally, Petitioners have, on numerous other
occasions,
requested public information from MDOL to no avail. See e.g., Exhibit 6,
March 19, 2001 and March 26, 2001, e-mails from BFC membersMeghan
Gill and Summer Nelson; see also Exhibit 4 (wherein Bernie Jacobs states
that the DOL received requests from other of Petitioners’ members, and
that his letter responds to those requests as well as to the March 26,
2001 request from Darrell Geist) .
MDOL’s conduct amounts to willful denial of access to public
documents. Such conduct inarguably violates Petitioners’ fundamental
constitutional rights to know and to examine public documents, as well as
their statutory rights in the same.
