Louisiana Parish government payroll request (Finance)

I am in receipt of your request for information (see below). We can make this information available to you; however, please make note of the provisions of the Louisiana Revised Statutes listed below. Once these are satisfied, the information can be released by the following day.

Louisiana Revised Statutes 44:32(A) provides that "The custodian shall make no inquiry of any person who applies for a public record, except an inquiry as to the age and identification of the person and may require the person to sign a register. . . ." La. R.S. 44:31.1 disqualifies a convicted felon in custody from getting most public records. Therefore, I am requesting that you furnish Lafayette Consolidated Government a copy of your State issued identification as well as a signed statement as to whether or not you are a convicted felon in custody.

La. R.S. 44:32(C) provides that “The custodian may establish and collect reasonable fees for making copies of public records.” If this information is provided in a hard copy mailed to you, it will be 489 pages. We will need to print these pages and scan them to you if the reply is in electronic format. Therefore, the cost of these copies will be $53.40.

Please make the check payable to Lafayette Consolidated Government and mail it to my attention at 705 West University Ave, Lafayette, LA 70506. Please also let me know what format you would like to receive the response - hard copy through the mail or a scanned PDF document through email.

I am in receipt of your second request for information (see below). There is no reason that we cannot make this information available as I mentioned in my email dated March 11, 2013. We absolutely can make this information available to you and will be happy to do so; however, please make note of the provisions of the Louisiana Revised Statutes listed below. Once these are satisfied, the information can be released by the following day.

Louisiana Revised Statutes 44:32(A) provides that "The custodian shall make no inquiry of any person who applies for a public record, except an inquiry as to the age and identification of the person and may require the person to sign a register. . . ." La. R.S. 44:31.1 disqualifies a convicted felon in custody from getting most public records. Therefore, I am requesting that you furnish Lafayette Consolidated Government a copy of your State issued identification as well as a signed statement as to whether or not you are a convicted felon in custody.

La. R.S. 44:32(C) provides that “The custodian may establish and collect reasonable fees for making copies of public records.” If this information is provided in a hard copy mailed to you, it will be 489 pages. We will need to print these pages and scan them to you if the reply is in electronic format. Therefore, the cost of these copies will be $53.40.

Please make the check payable to Lafayette Consolidated Government and mail it to my attention at 705 West University Ave, Lafayette, LA 70506. Please also let me know what format you would like to receive the response - hard copy through the mail or a scanned PDF document through email.

We will provide this in electronic PDF file(s). The PDF file(s) will be emailed to you once we receive the per page fee. This is a nominal fee charged to cover the cost of printing and copying the report. Even though you will receive it in a PDF file(s), it must be printed and scanned. If you would like the hard copy as well, we will be happy to send both. This nominal fee in no way covers the cost to this government of producing this report for you.

Our IT staff thinks they may be able to write a report that will be shorter in length and still give you the information you require. They work on this next week. As soon as I know the number of estimated pages, I will let you know the cost for reproduction. If you prefer, you may send your check for the amounts specified earlier and we will submit the 489 page report(s).

We currently do not have a report that we can automatically run that will give you the information you requested in the format you are requesting it in. Our reports either don't have the information you are requesting or include items like employees social security number, date of birth, number of hours on unpaid Family Medical Leave, etc.

While Louisiana Revised Statutes do not require us to create a record that does not otherwise exist, we know that a more streamlined report will serve as a useful management tool; therefore, our IT department is working on a report and is in the final stage of validating the output. We may be able to send this in a different format but only if the data is validated.

We will calculate the charge based on the number of pages that the report will be if/when printed from our financial management system. Please remember, this small fee does not come close to covering the cost to this government of creating, validating, producing the report, and handling this public records request. The un-validated draft report for one years' data is 101 pages. The per page fee is calculated as follows:

1-10 Pages $.25 each
11-30 $.20 each
31-50 $.15 each
51 - Up $.10 each

We hope to be able to validate the data in the next day or two and we will let you know the final page count. If the page count remains unchanged, your fee would be $14.45 for each year or $28.90 total. Once the fee is received, we will release the report.

Lorrie R. Toups CPA

The reports are ready and our IT department was able to put it in an excel file. The total number of pages is 195. As soon we receive payment we will email you the reports. Please remit $24.30. Make the check payable to Lafayette Consolidated Government and mail it to my attention at 705 West University Ave, Lafayette, LA 70506. A hard copy is also available to you. Let us know where you would like us to mail it.

Thanks.

This information has already been sent. I received a confirmation from you on April 10, 2013. See the attached email.