ALEC - AGs Request (Office of the Attorney General - Indiana)
| Submitted | May 8, 2015 |
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Communications
From: Alex Richardson
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
- All communications between members of this office and employees or representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
- All communications containing the keywords "ALEC" or "American Legislative Exchange Council".
- Any files or documents attached to the above communications.
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 fees cannot be waived, 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,
Alex Richardson
From: Knight, Margaret
Hello,
Attached is the acknowledgement letter for your public records request from the Office of the Indiana Attorney General.
Thank you,
Margaret Knight
Margaret Knight
Paralegal, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
(317) 232-0214
margaret.knight@atg.in.gov<mailto:margaret.knight@atg.in.gov>
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you have received it in error, please advise the sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.
From: Crisler, Emily
Mr. Richardson,
The attached public records request was received by our office on May 8th, 2015. In order to better respond to your request, could you please specify a date range that you would like us to gather any communication from?
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you have received it in error, please advise the sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.
From: Alex Richardson
Hello Ms. Crisler,
No problem, thanks for the quick response! I would be interested in anything over the past ten years - do you keep records for that long? Don't hesitate to reach out if this proves problematic.
Best,
Alex Richardson
From: Crisler, Emily
Mr. Richardson,
While the Commission on Public Records only requires that we keep general documents and policy documents for three (3) calendar years, our office does maintain electronic records and communications for a longer period. If our office has any documents responsive to your request, they will most likely be e-mail communications. As of August 2009, all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages are retained indefinitely by our office and we are confident that all relevant e-mails, if any, can be retrieved. However, any communications prior to August 2009 are only recoverable via a search of backup tapes, and this method of retrieval is not as reliable.
I’ll plan to collect and review any documents available after August 2009, and will work with our IT Department to retrieve what we can from prior to August 2009.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
From: Alex Richardson
Hey Ms. Crisler,
Thank you! I am primarily interested in communications dating 2010 and after, but anything you dig up will definitely be of interest to me. Let me know if I can help with clarification, etc. in any way.
Best,
Alex Richardson
From: Crisler, Emily
IT is currently pulling all of the relevant documents for our review. I will update you as to how many documents are retrieved and will have to be reviewed.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 8, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thank you for your help.
From: Crisler, Emily
Our IT department has just completed the search of our records for the potentially relevant communications. I should be able to start reviewing the materials shortly, and once the review process begins I should be able to forward you the responsive and disclosable documents in batches as I finish reviewing.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
From: Crisler, Emily
Attached are the disclosable documents responsive to your public records requests for communications between members of this office and employees or representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
In searching our email records for any communications containing the keywords “ALEC” and “American Legislative Exchange Council”, there were little over 1,300 hits for those search terms. After a quick initial review of a few of these emails, we believe that most are duplicate records, as well as links or references to news sources mentioning ALEC and/or the American Legislative Exchange Council.
If you would like our office to review these 1,300+ emails for disclosure, let me know.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
From: Alex Richardson
Hello Ms. Crisler,
Thanks for getting back to me. That's a ton of records! I won't have you go through all of those, so let's try to narrow things down.
Instead of an office-wide search for the terms ALEC and American Legislative Exchange Council, why don't we only search the email address of the attorney general him/herself for these terms.
For the rest of the office, why don't we limit the search to any communications with the domain @alec.org and any known representatives of ALEC.
Do you think that will narrow things down a bit? I don't want to eat up too much of your time.
Best,
Alex Richardson
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 8, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thank you for your help.
From: Crisler, Emily
Our IT department revised the search parameters based on your revised request submitted on June 23, and I am currently completing our review of the documents that are potentially responsive to your request. However, before I finalize our review and the corresponding response letter I wanted to verify the parameters of you request.
Based on your June 23, 2015 request revision, you are seeking all communications from the email address of the Attorney General containing the keywords “ALEC” or “American Legislative Exchange Council”, as well as any files or documents attached to these communications. Is that correct?
The first portion of your original request regarding all direct communications between members of our office and the employees or representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council, has already been forwarded via email on June 12th.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
From: Crisler, Emily
Attached is our final response letter to your records request, as well as the remaining documents that are responsive to your request.
If you have any questions regarding this public records request, please feel free to contact me.
Emily Crisler
Deputy Attorney General, Advisory Division
Office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller
302 West Washington Street - IGCS, 5th Floor
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: (317) 234-4668
Fax: (317) 232-7979
emily.crisler@atg.in.gov<mailto:emily.crisler@atg.in.gov>
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