Public Records Request: MALETA Agreements
| Submitted | Sept. 30, 2023 |
MuckRock users can file, duplicate, track, and share public records requests like this one. Learn more.
Communications
From: e
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Tennessee Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
All contracts, licenses, MOUs, MOAs, RFP submissions, agreements, letters of intent, and other agreement documents with the following entities for the construction of the Multi Agency Law Enforcement Training Academy (SBC Project No.: 529/017-01-2021-06):
AECOM Technical Services, Inc.
TMPartners, PLLC
Earl Swensson Associates, Inc
Tuck Hinton Architects, PLC or Anecdote
Reeves+Young
Hoar Construction, LLC
Turner Construction Co
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 7 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Kent Hoover, a citizen of Tennessee, in coordination with e.
From:
Thank you for your submission.
The Department of General Services confirms the submission of your
public records request.
For more detailed information, please see our rules concerning
requests to view public records.
From: e
Thank you.
I am checking on the status of my request.
From: Department of General Services
On November 1, 2023, I sent the following response regarding this and the additional 13 public records requests submitted by Kent Hoover. I sent it via email to the email that came with one of the requests. I also sent hard copies in the mail to Kent Hoover and to MuckRock. Here are the details:
November 1, 2023
Kent Hoover
1199 Street Rd
Kingston Springs, TN 37082-9242
Re: MALETA-related Public Records Request
Dear Mr. Hoover,
I am writing about the multiple public records requests the Department of General Services received from you via the MuckRock platform related to the MALETA project. (See the attached spreadsheet consolidating all the requests we received.)
Upon receiving your 14 different requests, we determined it would be best to aggregate these requests into one response since all the requests are related. I made multiple efforts to reach you, using two of the unique emails that were listed with a couple of your requests to explain this and provide an estimate on the time and fees associated with his request. It is our policy that we do not gather records in a circumstance like this without approval of the costs and receipt of payment. Absent a response approving the over 160 hours of work associated with the request, coming in at a cost of $9,409.81, and said payment, DGS will hold these aggregated requests for 30 days before canceling them.
Absent a response from you, I also forwarded these emails to the general MuckRock email address. (See attached documentation.)
On Tuesday, October 24, our office received a response from someone named M Sostre with MuckRock, requesting the metadata of these emails, as opposed to the entire file.
According to the Tennessee Public Records Act, the State may provide public records to Tennessee citizens. There is no way to authenticate this via email. Therefore, to request the metadata of the same emails, it would need to be submitted as a new request by someone who has a valid Tennessee ID.
I will also note that if a second request was submitted for the metadata of these same records, it would be around 60+ hours of time and cost roughly $3,500 for those files. Again, the State would not move forward to gathering any records until we received confirmation of the time and costs and receipt of payment.
As I previously stated, without authorization and payment, the Department of General Services will cancel the previous requests submitted if we do not receive a response or payment in the next 30 days.
Also, if someone wants to pursue a similar request, it would need to be a new request submitted online through our portal at https://www.tn.gov/generalservices/about-dgs/public-records-requests.html and would again need to be requested by someone with a Tennessee residence with proof of ID.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I’ve included my contact information below.
Sincerely,
Michelle Sanders Parks | Director of Communications
Tennessee Tower, 22nd Floor
312 Rosa L. Parks Ave., Nashville, TN 37243
p. 615-532-2527 c. 615-613-4502
michelle.parks@tn.gov
tn.gov/generalservices/
Enclosures (3)
