Sometimes it all works

It’s always a chore, making formal requests under Louisiana’s Public Records Act from local and state government agencies.

For one thing, the list of things the public does not have a right to see grows and grows in this state while the list of what they are required to show you gets ever smaller.

We are not talking national security issues here. Rather, some notable exemptions are records that show the day-to-day working of the Office of the Governor, in terms of internal communication between that publicly elected official and appointed agency heads.

Newspapers used to pump a lot of money into the legal fees that massed up because of the public’s right to know and defended it all zealously by bringing disputes over what is public to court. It doesn’t happen so much anymore.

So last week, as part of the continuing saga I have been writing about the Terrebonne Economic Development Authority and plans by Parish President Michel Claudet to remove its funding, I needed a better look at government behind the scenes.

So I wrote up a public records request, taking care not to make it unduly burdensome, being specific in what I wanted, and sent it to Parish President Michel Claudet.

He sent it – as is proper – to Parish Manager Al Levron.

The request was kind of simple.

I wanted e-mails, memos and anything else dating back to Aug. 1 that had in it the words “TEDA” or “economic development,” sent by or between Claudet and his staff.

Although living through two terms in office has thickened his skin a bit, Claudet still has a reputation for occasionally being defensive. Whether that’s the case or not isn’t the point here. The point is that his administration performed admirable. And if there was anything I wanted to know about discussions in electronic form involving TEDA over the past month for which an electronic record exists, the problem would be in the filing of the request rather than the filling of it by Claudet’s staff.

I received, within the period prescribed by law, no excuses or delays, but a sparkling CD-ROM containing precisely what I asked for.

The interesting thing about this is how, when I pored through these e-mails to find what information pertained to my project, I got a small snapshot of how parish government works on a day-to-day basis, not so much in terms of what I needed but the stuff I didn’t need.

There were e-mails that indicate the tremendous amount of work that gets done by people in that big white tower, the day-to-day stuff that doesn’t always make news but which keeps Terrebonne Parish running.

Statements to be made by Claudet received multiple look-overs from multiple pairs of eyes. Concerns voiced by constituents were promptly– no matter how succinctly – acknowledged and replied to.

So I got a twofer last week, the material I requested as well as the stuff I didn’t, which told me a very cool behind-the-scenes story.

I am sharing all that with you now because what you need to know, if nothing else, that the stuff people in the government do isn’t always bad, and that there are some dedicated people who are involved in it.

And the second thing is that when reporters do their work, they don’t always look for the bad, or report on the bad, or the controversial or the unresolved. Although everyone loves a good story.

Sometimes we do take a moment to let everyone know that the trains can and do run on time, and that despite disagreements between personalities that we tend to focus on there are those times when everyone does get it right.

And my small adventure with my simple request to Michel Claudet was certainly an example of that.