Decca Muldowney From: Sent: To: Subject: Torres-Segura, Rosio (HCOHSEM) Wednesday, November 1, 2017 12:15 PM Sanchez, Francisco (HCOHSEM) Re: Red Cross Public Information Act Request Do you want to reply to the reporter or do you want me to tell her these documents do not exist. She’s going to ask why? Rosie Sent from my iPhone On Nov 1, 2017, at 10:37 AM, Sanchez, Francisco (HCOHSEM) wrote: For the following, which it turns out we do not have:     Copies of any Pre-Occupancy Inspections carried out by Harris County – as outlined on page 8, section B of the mass shelter plan. Copies of any prior agreements made with Refuges of Last Resort in Harris County – as outlined on page 7, section 6.2 of the Refuge of Last Resort Plan The list of county shelters and RLRs used by Harris County during Harvey, with dates they were opened and closed and the name of the person in charge of the facility. The copies of the staff sign-in sheets at all RLRs. An example of this sheet is given as Appendix C: RLR Forms on page 19 of the Refuges of Last Resort Plan. FS From: Sloan, Mark T. (HCOHSEM) Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2017 10:37 AM To: Sanchez, Francisco (HCOHSEM) ; Torres-Segura, Rosio (HCOHSEM) Subject: RE: Red Cross Public Information Act Request What did they ask for? From: Sanchez, Francisco (HCOHSEM) Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 9:37 PM To: Torres-Segura, Rosio (HCOHSEM) 1 Cc: Sloan, Mark T. (HCOHSEM) Subject: Re: Red Cross Public Information Act Request Please pull the documents and hold internally until we hear from the county attorney. I would like them on stand-by Thursday afternoon. Obviously, we can’t pull the emails but let’s have the plans and docs we own ready. Best, FS [ Please excuse any typos. I sent this from a mobile device ] On Oct 31, 2017, at 9:18 PM, Torres-Segura, Rosio (HCOHSEM) wrote: Got this from reporter that filed open records request. Rosie Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: Jessica Huseman Date: October 31, 2017 at 4:59:57 PM CDT To: "Torres-Segura, Rosio (HCOHSEM)" Subject: FW: Red Cross Public Information Act Request RosieSee below. It is clear that the records office is deeply overwhelmed. I have yet to receive even an acknowledgment of the request you and I discussed. This is why I’d hoped to get access them directly through your office. If there is any way to move forward getting those records outside of the formal records process, I think that might save everyone a lot of time and confusion. The county, it appears, has conflated the 2 records request I sent to Mr. Henderson (as you recommended) with another, unrelated records request I made more than a month ago. You may see the exchange below regarding that conflation. It has come to my attention in the last several days that many of the records I requested from your office do not exist at all. If you can confirm that any of the below records do not exist, I will withdraw the records request and save county employees unnecessary time spent trying to find nonexistent records. To the extent that these records do exist, they are clearly outlined in county-accepted emergency management plans. They should be easy to locate, and are inherently public. For your convenience, the records I requested from your office are below:     Copies of any Pre-Occupancy Inspections carried out by Harris County – as outlined on page 8, section B of the mass shelter plan. Copies of any prior agreements made with Refuges of Last Resort in Harris County – as outlined on page 7, section 6.2 of the Refuge of Last Resort Plan The list of county shelters and RLRs used by Harris County during Harvey, with dates they were opened and closed and the name of the person in charge of the facility. The copies of the staff sign-in sheets at all RLRs. An example of this sheet is given as Appendix C: RLR Forms on page 19 of the Refuges of Last Resort Plan. I know your office is quite busy dealing with the aftermath of Harvey. It is not my intention to add unnecessary work to your plate. Please let me know if the above listed records exist, and I will modify the records request I sent on Oct. 18 accordingly. Thanks, -3 Jessica Huseman Reporter, ProPublica Office: 917-512-0288 Cell/Signal: 972-268-1882 @JessicaHuseman From: ProPublica Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 4:30 PM To: "Ray, Douglas (CAO)" Cc: "Soard, Robert (CAO)" , "Luhn, Kathy (County Judge's Office)" , "Henderson, Bill (County Judge's Office)" , "Sloan, Mark T. (HCOHSEM)" , "Stinebaker, Joe (County Judge's Office)" , "Lee, Kristen (CAO)" , "Decca M. Muldowney" Subject: Re: Red Cross Public Information Act Request Mr. Ray: Respectfully, much of your response this morning is in error. It is clear that there is a substantial amount of confusion regarding what outstanding requests ProPublica has with Harris County. I accused Harris County of violating Texas Public Records law because it has — and I do not make that accusation lightly. Hopefully the below email will allow us to come to a mutually agreeable solution to these issues. For transparency and your convenience, I have spelled out all communication ProPublica has had with Harris County in this email, and have included hyperlinked copies of the emails I reference for your convenience. If you have trouble viewing them, please let me know. You indicate in your email that we have had “several telephone conversations” so that your office could give us “the status of [our] request.” The dates of these calls are listed alongside the emails – we even provide a copy of a voicemail left by Kristen Lee – but these calls provided no such clarity. Instead, both calls and emails indicated we would receive a response to one request on days it did not come. For two other requests, there has 4 been no communication whatsoever despite multiple follow up emails sent by our research assistant. We have not been insistent upon receiving the record from our outstanding requests because we have unrealistic expectations or because we refuse to be “patient.” We have been insistent because Ms. Lee informed us we should anticipate receiving them weeks ago, and because we have not been provided estimated return dates as required by law. We are of course willing to give you the time that you need, but we continue to follow up because Harris County has not indicated what that time is. At present, ProPublica has three outstanding requests. In this morning’s email, you reference a request made on “Oct. 17,” which you say is related to “all emails to or from several individuals pertaining to the Red Cross between August 28th and September 15th, 2017.” That is false. Our request for emails from those individuals related to the Red Cross was made on Sept. 13 — more than a month before the date you claim in your email. I assume that the request you are referring to was a separate request I made on Oct. 18, which related to specific emergency management records known to be held by the county — the records only tangentially relate to the Red Cross and have nothing to do with the hundreds of responsive emails you reference. Further, the call I placed to you yesterday was not related to this request. It is not clear to me why two requests made more than a month apart from each other have been conflated in this way. Additionally, we have a third request outstanding. It was made on Oct. 6, and related to emails from the office of emergency management regarding the county’s mass shelter plan and the county’s refuge of last resort plan. To date, this records request has not even been acknowledged by your office. As you know, records law requires public information officers to produce records within 10 business days or provide in writing a “date and hour within a reasonable time when the information will be available for inspection or duplication.” That law has not been followed here in multiple respects. For your convenience, I will explain where we are with each records request as it relates to those three issues. Hopefully this resolves the confusion evident in the email from this morning. 5 The first request, sent on Sept. 13, was for the emails from several individuals related to the Red Cross. This request was never formally acknowledged in writing. Because of this, our research assistant sent a follow up email on Sept. 28 inquiring as to its status — she sent this email to both Ms. Lee and Doug Adkinson. Mr. Adkinson forwarded the email to Ms. Lee on Sept. 29 and said “Kristen FYI.” Still, we received no response in writing. In a phone call in the days that followed, Ms. Lee told our research assistant that the emails would come shortly and that she had them “sitting in front of [her]." That call is referenced in an email our research assistant sent on Oct. 6, inquiring as to the status of the request. In response, Ms. Lee said, “We are actively working on them. We hope to have them to you today.” On Oct. 11, Ms. Lee left our research assistant a voicemail indicating that she was getting our records requests “confused,” and requested we provide a list of requests still outstanding. Our research assistant provided such a list on Oct. 12. This morning’s email is the first we have heard that there are more than 1,000 responsive documents to this request — filed more than a month ago. You also indicate the following in your email: “Since the amount of documentation generated initially is so voluminous, it will take us some time to review it for relevancy and produce the material you wanted to you. This has been clearly communicated to your organization on more than one occasion.” No one in Harris county has ever said anything to this effect, and Ms. Lee has twice — once by email and once by phone — indicated the emails were coming imminently, which clearly contradicts what you have said here. It is not clear to me on what you are basing the claim that we were told multiple times that this request would take substantial time. If we had been told this, we would not have followed up so consistently from the day the request was filed. Further troubling: When our research assistant called the Texas Attorney General’s office for assistance related to this specific request, the attorney she spoke with indicated to us that his system reflected that this request had been closed — something he said should only happen when the request had been fulfilled. It has not, as you know, been fulfilled. The second request was sent on Oct. 6, and related to emails from specific individuals within the emergency management office and several key words related to the county’s mass care plan and refuge of last resort plan. To date — and we are well outside the 10 day window allowed by law — this request has not yet been 6 formally acknowledged and we have not been provided a date on which we can expect this request. In the email our research assistant sent to Ms. Lee following her voicemail on Oct. 12, she also included a reminder of this outstanding request. Ms. Lee did not respond to that email. The attorney at the Texas AG’s office informed us that the system reflects no logging of this request whatsoever. It is not clear to us nor to the AG’s office that you are processing this request, and we have no evidence to suggest that you are. The third request was — on recommendation of the press officer at the emergency management division — sent to William Henderson on Oct. 18. It contained a request for several documents known to be held by the county, all of which are inherently public. I did not know until I followed up with Mr. Henderson yesterday that this response, too, had been sent to your office. Prior to that, I had received no indication my request dated Oct. 18 had even been received. Tomorrow marks 10 business days since that request was sent, so your office does have until tomorrow to comply with the law. Again, in the conversation I had with you yesterday, this request was not mentioned as you are still within this window. I am happy to follow up tomorrow regarding this records request. ProPublica sent a few other requests which have been fulfilled or closed by Harris County, and we thank you for that work. They include: - Copies of The Mass Shelter Plan and the Refuges of Last Resort Plan (completed 09/13/17) - A list of Harris County Employees trained through the Harris County Human Resources and Risk Management in Shelter Operations (completed 10/04/17) - Copy of Annex C: Shelter and Mass Care, a section of Harris County Emergency Management Plan (10/04/17) - A request to the Harris County Commissioners Court (closed with no responsive documents on 10/19/2017) Given the conflation of the records requests in your email from this morning, and the clear confusion that exists surrounding the communication we have had with Harris County, we thought it was best to involve a neutral third party. Immediately prior to sending this email, we faxed an informal complaint to the attorney general’s office alerting them to these issues. 7 I hope that this timeline and the copies of communication we have provided to you address all confusion related to these three outstanding requests. Given this information, it is clear that you are in violation of state public records law and we believe the attorney general’s office will agree. Please provide those records, or - as state law indicates - provide a written estimation for when we can expect them. Thank you. -Jessica Huseman Reporter, ProPublica Office: 917-512-0288 Cell/Signal: 972-268-1882 @JessicaHuseman From: "Ray, Douglas (CAO)" Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 10:38 AM To: ProPublica Cc: "Soard, Robert (CAO)" , "Luhn, Kathy (County Judge's Office)" , "Henderson, Bill (County Judge's Office)" , "Sloan, Mark T. (HCOHSEM)" , "Stinebaker, Joe (County Judge's Office)" , "Lee, Kristen (CAO)" Subject: Red Cross Public Information Act Request Following our phone conversation on Monday morning, I looked into the status of the Public Information Act requests which your organization has made to the Harris County Office of Emergency Management (HCOEM) pertaining to the Red Cross. I found that this request was one of several which we have received from your organization in the last two months regarding our response to Hurricane Harvey and that all have been or are being handled in accordance with the Texas Public Information Act. Indeed, at least one requested document was even sent to you on the same day it was requested. 8 I found that the request for the Red Cross emails was received by HCOEM on October 17, 2017, just two weeks ago. This request asks for all emails to or from several individuals pertaining to the Red Cross between August 28th and September 15th, 2017. It was determined that there are over 1,000 emails which may be responsive to this request. Upon investigation, I discovered that our office has had several telephone conversations since then to report to your organization the status of your request. Since the amount of documentation generated initially is so voluminous, it will take us some time to review it for relevancy and produce the material you wanted to you. This has been clearly communicated to your organization on more than one occasion. Harris County, in general, and HCOEM in particular have been very hard pressed to deal with Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. Despite that, we are endeavoring to satisfy in a timely manner all requests for information which we receive. The law allows a reasonable amount of time to the responding agency to produce requested documents, and it is our intent to do so in this case. I also discovered during my inquiry that you have sent an email to various Harris County officials claiming that Harris County is “wildly out of compliance” with the Public Information Act. We take exception to that claim and would appreciate your providing this Office with specific facts that support this allegation. Your email also mentions anticipated litigation against Harris County in order to bring about compliance. If that is your intention please have your attorneys contact me. Please be patient. The complete review of the documents generated will be completed soon and will be forwarded to you. If you have any further need of my assistance, please let me know. 9