MBTA criteria to fire an employee or contractor

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, M.G.L. c.66, §10, I hereby request the following records:

Requesting all policies, procedures, guidelines and requirements to fire an MBTA employee or contractor.

I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as we believe this request is in the public interest, as suggested but not stipulated by the recommendations of the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.

I expect the request to be filled in an accessible format, including for screen readers, which provide text-to-speech for persons unable to read print. Files that are not accessible to screen readers include, for example, .pdf image files as well as physical documents.

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 10 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Brian McCarter

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 29, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

The records request below was sent to the defunct recordsrequest@mbta.com. Please confirm receipt by the email address below or by letter to the below address.

Thank you.

====================

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, M.G.L. c.66, §10, I hereby request the following records:

Requesting all policies, procedures, guidelines and requirements to fire an MBTA employee or contractor.

I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as we believe this request is in the public interest, as suggested but not stipulated by the recommendations of the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.

I expect the request to be filled in an accessible format, including for screen readers, which provide text-to-speech for persons unable to read print. Files that are not accessible to screen readers include, for example, .pdf image files as well as physical documents.

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 10 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Brian McCarter

Ms. Krupanski:

These documents are of general public interest and should be freely and publicly available. The cost of this request is excessive and should be waived.

Thank you for forwarding some of the requested documents. The provided documents only cover termination of contractors. Please provide the documents pertinent to termination of employees as per the original request. Thank you.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

As faxed to the Legal Department on November 14, 2013, as well as several times since:

Thank you for forwarding some of the requested documents. The provided documents only cover termination of contractors. Please provide the documents pertinent to termination of employees as per the original request. Thank you.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Can you provide a brief summary of the requirements to fire an employee? I would like to review if that would meet my needs before providing over a thousand dollars for documents that may not be relevant. Once again, given the general interest in something as basic as what requirements must be met to terminate and employee should be fairly simple to provide and readily available. Given that a directive was recently published recommending that employees receive a 30 day suspension and recommended for termination, someone must have recently updated the requirements and has them handy without having to expend additional resources to locate the documents beyond scanning copies. http://www.metro.us/boston/news/2014/02/06/mbta-warns-it-will-fire-workers-for-sleeping-on-the-job/

Here is an additional recent incident where an employee was terminated. I am assuming that legal reviewed the requirements to terminate an employee before doing so. These docs should be on someone's desk.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/03/14/human-error-found-green-line-trolley-derailment/PDBz9Sf4C7bnVhdbCbR7TN/story.html

To summarize, I am requesting waver of the fees on these documents and a preliminary summary of the requirements to terminate an employee.

Dear Susan M. Krupanski,

It is unfortunate that at summary is not available as it would help save the MBTA time in finding these documents. I am reiterating my request for a fee waiver for these documents since the fees seem excessive for documents that should be readily available and are of wide public interest.

Beverly Scott said "It's absolutely essential that we do everything we can to help ensure that each customer's trip is a safe one,"

Knowing what rules the employees of the fifth largest transit system have to abide by, would help the general public understand better what is being done behind the scenes to keep them safe.

Best Regards.

Sincerely,
Brian McCarter

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

I would like to follow up with the MBTA now that Bill H.4333 has been signed into law. Please provide the records requested in the original request. Since this information is in the public interest and for the public benefit, it should be released gratis.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Nov. 1, 2013.

Now that H.4333 has passed, please provide all these records in PDF format. Given that it is "likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor" (per the exact wording of this law, please provide these records free of charge.

Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Now that H.4333 has passed, please provide all these records in PDF format. Given that it is "likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor" (per the exact wording of this law, please provide these records free of charge.

When can we expect these documents to be provided?

To Whom It May Concern:

The following request, which is related to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and is copied below, has not received an update or response in quite a while. If your office could please provide an update on this request and an estimated completion date, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help, and please let me know if further clarification is needed.

"Requesting all policies, procedures, guidelines and requirements to fire an MBTA employee or contractor." Was submitted on 04/29/2013. Please answer this request under the new records law. Thank you.

I replay was sent via standard email, but has not been acknowledged. Please acknowledge the request for "Requesting all policies, procedures, guidelines and requirements to fire an MBTA employee or contractor." which has been outstanding since 04/29/2013 and was also resent to you on 03/01/2018.

Thank you.

To Whom it May Concern:
I’m hereby appealing the MBTA’s failure to release records responsive to a public records request for “ all policies, procedures, guidelines and requirements to fire an MBTA employee or contractor,” originally filed on April 29, 2013.
The MBTA originally asked that $1,375.23 be paid before they would release responsive documents. After I protested the excessive fee in a Nov. 8, 2013 email (see enclosed for this and all other communications exchanged in the process of this request), the MBTA released a portion of the documents I requested.
On Nov. 14, 2013, I sent the MBTA an email asking that they release documents pertinent to the termination of employees, as I’d originally requested, because they only released documents regarding the termination of contractors.
On April 16, 2014, the MBTA’s Assistant General Counsel, Susan M. Krupanski, said in an email that I would need to pay the fee outlined in the letter sent to me prior to the release of a portion of the documents I’d requested.
In her April 16. 2014, Krupanski wrote: “On November 6, 2013, you were provided with an estimate of costs for search and segregation of records relating to Termination of Employees. The MBTA has not yet received a check for payment of said costs.”
The invoice to which she’s referring (see enclosed) does not specify that the fee is directly related to either search and segregation, or to the policies regarding the termination of employees.
The MBTA’s partial release of documents responsive to this request after I protestested the fee they attempted to charge as excessive, amounts to an agreement to release all of the documents I requested free of charge, not just the tiny portion the MBTA released.
The documents released related to the termination of contractors were not redacted at all, and it beggars belief that similar policies regarding a different category of employees would warrant a review so exhaustive that it justifies the MBTA’s $1,375.23 fee.
Please note that as the MBTA was processing this request, Massachusetts passed an updated public records law which allows for four free hours of search time, and every hour after that is to performed by the lowest paid employee with the skills necessary to process the request, and the hourly fee shall not exceed $25 per hour.
The fee charged by the MBTA for this public records request calculates the price at $50 per hour for the H.R. Counsel to “search and assemble” the documents, and $46.51 per hour for the Legal Counsel to search and assemble documents as well. These charges far exceed what is allowed under the current law.

Sincerely,
Brian McCarter