FOI
DP racks up $200k travel bill
(CNS): Since taking up office in May 2009, the deputy premier has taken 21 different overseas trips to countries across the globe, from Sri-Lanka to the Pacific Islands. Juliana O’Connor-Connolly, who is also the minister for agriculture, works and communications, has racked up a travel and accommodation bill for her ministry alone of more than CI$213,000. Travelling in the Americas and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, she has attended conferences on telecommunications, agriculture, women’s affairs and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meetings, spending an accumulative total of more than five months abroad.
According to details released to CNS following a freedom of information request, the most expensive trip has been a two week plus trip to Doha, Qatar, for the 25th Universal Postal Congress, which took place in September and October this year. The minister spent more than $41,000 on flights, accommodation and expenses for herself, the ministry’s chief officer, Alan Jones, and her executive aide, Paul Leonce.
A spreadsheet from the ministry documents the deputy premier’s overseas trips since she took office. The minister has attended a number of Commonwealth Parliamentary meetings, as well as various conferences. She spent just over $12,000 on a ten day trip to Sri Lanka for the CPA conference in September of this year, where she was accompanied by her executive aide. Another costly CPA trip was to Tonga in April 2012 for two weeks, where she was again accompanied by Leonce and where flights, accommodation and expenses were just under $12,000.
In February last year, the deputy premier racked up a travel bill of over $35,000 when she, her executive aide, thepermanent secretary and UDP backbench MLA Cline Glidden spent over one week in Barcelona at a telecoms conference. Back in September 2010 O’Connor-Connolly also spent well over $10,000 on a trip to Kenya for a CPA conference, and was again accompanied only by Leonce, her executive aide.
The various trips began within nine weeks of O’Connor-Connolly taking up office, when she took a five day trip to Jamaica for the Denbigh Agricultural show, when she was accompanied by her permanent secretary at the time, the deputy permanent secretary, her personal assistant and the director of agriculture. Although there was no cost to attend the conference, the trip cost the public purse almost $11,000. In November and December of her first year in office the minister racked up a further $25,000 on OTCC meetings in both Anguilla and London.
With a tight budget, government expenses and overseas travel has been a controversial subject, with the premier in particular coming in for some serious criticisms. As the tourism and finance minister, McKeeva Bush has persistently defended his extensive travel budget, stating that he must go overseas as often as he does in order to protect the offshore sector and generate new business for the local economy.
However, the deputy premier has said little about her own relatively busy travel schedule, which critics have said is even more surprising, given that her portfolio, which includes district administration, public works, lands and agriculture, has no international business.
See full details below of the trips taken by the deputy premier since taking office.
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$584k added to Tempura bill
(CNS): Although lead investigating officer Martin Bridger and most of his special police investigation team (SPIT) left the island well over three years ago, the discredited enquiry he led into alleged corruption within the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is still costing the local tax payer money. According to information released by the Portfolio of Legal Affairs, since the last public trial relating to the investigation in October 2009, the attorney general has run up a bill of almost $600,000 dealing with other legal claims and battles that relate to both former police commissioner, Stuart Kernohan, and Bridger in an effort to prevent the former Scotland Yard cop from using documents to clear his own name in Kernohan’s law suit.
The investigation into the RCIPS, which was paid for by the Cayman tax payer, failed to uncover any wrongdoing. It began as an undercover operation in September 2007 and reached the height of notoriety when the team wrongfully arrested Grand Court Judge Alex Henderson. The arrest was found to be unlawful following a ruling by Sir Peter Cresswell, who now sits in Cayman’s financial services court.
Two more major courtroom dramas followed, the first involving former MLA and Cayman Net News reporter, Lyndon Martin, for breaking and entering into his own workplace, and the second in which former deputy commissioner ofpolice, Rudolph Dixon, was charged with misconduct in a public office. Both men were cleared and the investigation was eventually closed down.
Since then, however, Kernohan has filed a wrongful dismissal claim and Martin Bridger has gone to battle with the Cayman authorities over documents he holds regarding the corruption investigation, which he believes was prematurely halted.
In response to an FOI request by CNS, the Portfolio of Legal Affairs wrote to the news website stating that three separate matters relating to Operation Tempura were on-going since the Dixon trial, two of which are taking place in Cayman and one in the UK. The total cost to the public purse so far is $584,107.42 but these cases are far from over.
Although there has been no official confirmation regarding the status of thevarious on-going cases, it is understood that Burman Scott is still waiting on a settlement on damages he claimed from the Cayman government relating to his arrest in the Dixon case.
In addition, Kernohan is continuing his case against Bridger and the Cayman government over his dismissal, which he says was unlawful. The former top cop was dismissed by the then governor Stuart Jack when he refused to return to the island during his suspension in connection with the investigation.
Finally, Bridger is now engaged in a legal battle with the attorney general as the authorities here try to prevent him from using certain documents in his possession in the Kernohan case. The documents relate to the investigation and some believe they might prove embarrassing for the Cayman and UK authorities.
CNS understand that the documents may support Kernohan’s contention that both Stuart Jack and the overseas territories security advisor, Larry Covington, were well versed about the plan that Kernohan and his officers were following in connection with the trigger that resulted in Operation Tempura.
The investigation centred on claims made by Lyndon Martin to Rudolph Dixon that the Cayman Net News editor and proprietor, the late Desmond Seales, was engaged in a corrupt relationship with Deputy Commissioner Anthony Ennis. On hearing the accusations, Kernohan had informed the governor and Covington, telling them both that the police were working with Martin and his reporter colleague, John Evans, to try and find evidence for the very serious accusations before action was taken against Ennis.
Given the sensitivity of the accusations and the involvement of the media, Kernohan wanted to move with caution before issuing a warrant to search the offices of the newspaper, which could have easily have been misinterpreted as a threat to free speech.
As a result, Kernohan and Chief Inspector John Jones sanctioned a late night exploration by Martin and Evans of the newspaper offices where the men both worked before taking the step of issuing a warrant.
The bungled attempt by Evans and Martin to find corroborating evidence failed to recover any supporting documentation for the allegations but set off a train of bizarre events which resulted in the Operation Tempura investigation, which has already cost the Cayman public millions of dollars and is likely to cost it much more.
Visit the CNS Library for documents relating to Operations Tempura and Cealt.
Port slammed over FOI abuse
(CNS): The Information Commissioner's Office has condemned the Port Authority of the Cayman Islands (PACI) over the way it handled a freedom of information request made by CNS back in January regarding the GLF cruise berthing proposal. In her decision delivered Thursday, some ten months after we made our request, Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert described the procedural issues relating to the request as “unprecedented” and said the authority repeatedly failed to meet deadlines or cooperate with the ICO. “In my opinion PACI showed a total disregard for the policies and procedures of the ICO, and the FOI Law,” the information boss found as she announced that she was conducting a separate investigation under section 44 of the law regarding the port's failure to comply.
In the final analysis Dilbert has ordered some further records released and upheld the Port Authority's decision to keep others under wraps. However, her main concern in this case has been the failure of the authority to follow the law, not just in terms of what it should have released but also in connection with the procedural process.
CNS made the FOI request to the port in January after a previous request by someone else was dealt with by the commissioner but was then dropped by the applicant. From that point on the obstruction and difficultiesbegan.
Although the commissioner had ordered the records released to the original applicant, when CNS asked for the same records we were refused. Dilbert ordered the Port Authority to comply with her decision but it objected and questioned the validity of the commissioner applying the original decision to a new applicant.
The commissioner then turned to the courts to enforce her decision, but in the face of what was likely to be a costly and long legal battle, the more efficient move was for CNS to make a fresh request. We did so, and after some time received some records. However, it was very clear that not everything relating to our request had been released and as a result CNS asked the ICO to intervene once again.
"The unreasonable manner in which this request was handled at every step along the way unnecessarily created additional cost, work and delays for all concerned,” Dilbert said as she pointed to the obstructionism of the authority over the ten months since the request was submitted. She added that the authority consistently confused the disclosure of records to CNS as the applicant with the provision of copies of records to the ICO to enable the office to carry out the appeal under the law.
“This resulted in delays and much additional work on the part of the ICO to bring the appeal to this point,” Dilbert said in her decision, rejecting outright the port's claim that to “disclose any privileged documents in the absence of compulsion as to do so would result in waiver of privilege over these records.”
She said the authority had “grossly misused” the application of legal professional privilege in this case in various different ways.
Dilbert also said that once the ICO hearing began, the port engaged in “a month of negotiation, unacceptable delays, and non-cooperative and obstreperous responses”.
The authority did all it could to prevent the ICO seeing the documents that were in dispute but eventually agreed to staff from her office inspecting the responsive records at the offices of PACI’s lawyers.
“The ICO was challenged at each step of the way, and while to expedite matters the ICO agreed to inspect records at the offices of the lawyers, it placed significant and unnecessary logistical burdens on the staff. It was doubly frustrating, and further testifies to the obstructionist approach by PACI, when the resulting informal opinion letter was apparently not seriously considered after a further delay of over a month,” she added.
One of the most serious issues that came to light during this appeal, however, was that the ICO discovered records that should have been identified and provided to the office after the original open records request made which was later withdrawn (Hearing 19-01911). In short, the port may have deliberately withheld records that should have been declared to the ICO in a hearing that was completed last year in direct contravention of the law.
Following her instructions to the port to release more documents, the authority now has 45 days to reveal these outstanding records or seek judicial review. CNS, as the applicant, has accepted the commissioner's decision that some records actually are exempt under the law and others are not relevant and will not be seeking judicial review.
“However, we continue to live in hope that the port will comply with the order to release the records that Dilbert states are not exempt and hope that the almost year long record breaking request can finally be dealt with,' said reporter Wendy Ledger.
“I have made many FOI requests in the course of my work at CNS and many of them have seen public authorities missing deadlines and failing to release what they should, requiring the intervention of the ICO, but this was the most ridiculous of them all. It is quite apparent that whatever happened regarding the sudden rejection of the GLF cruise berthing proposal, the people of Cayman will never know the complete truth.The port's reluctance at every turn over this request speaks volumes about whether this was or was not above board,” Ledger added.
See ICO's full decision below.
$1.5M in duties waived
(CNS): Despite its difficulties balancing the books, the government waived close to CI$1.5 million in duties during the last financial year. On top of existing discounts on building materials, government also reduced, waived or discounted duties on a range of goods for local business and profit making commercial enterprises as well individuals, charities schools and government departments. According to a list released to a local MLA following a freedom of information request, government cut or waived duty for business such as supermarkets, fireworks companies, hotels and heavy equipment operators between 1 July 2011 and 30 June 2012.
The vast majority of recipients were government related entities or charities but there were a number of large waivers to profit making entities which the independent MLA for North Side said was inappropriate given the current situation with public finances.
“It’s hard to have the money to pay your bills when you are giving it way,” Ezzard Miller said regarding the documents he received from the finance ministry. “How can government justify giving money away to profit making commercial entities unless you are giving it to all?”
He pointed to the existing 20% reduction on building materials for developers and wondered why some businesses were getting more on top when others were required to pay the full amount.
It is not clear what the criteria is for these discretionary waivers, although the majority have been given to charities, schools churches or the public sector, including the police and the HealthServices Authority. There are, however, individuals as well as small businesses and large commercial enterprises on the list that have been given substantial waivers, discounts and refunds on a variety of things.
“My concern is that these discretionary waivers apply to selected people and not across the board, which means other businesses are not getting the same competitive advantage,” Miller added.
Government is budgeted to collect well over $120 million in duty on imported goods — not including duty on fuel – as it remains a major source of government revenue.
See details of FOI request on duty waivers below.
Old AG report still reveals lessons for government
(CNS): The first report conducted by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) into the local affordable housing scheme shows that government was warned more than eight years ago about the problems that can arise when it fails to follow due process. Reflecting on the report he wrote in August 2004, the former auditor general, Dan Duguay, told CNS that, as old as the report was, it still had some value to government. “There are still lessons to be learned of the dangers of going without proper procurements, which is a recent theme in government. It seems like sometimes government never learns,” Duguay said after the report was released following a freedom of information request by CNS.
The audit had been kept under wraps for so long because it was conducted before the relevant rules relating to the auditor general’s reports were altered to allow the office to release its work to the public a few days after being seen by the Public Accounts Committee members.
The report was finally examined by the parliamentary committee at its last meeting in September, when Dr Frank McField gave evidence to the committee and defended the way in which the project had been procured and the quality of the homes.
The current auditor general, Alastair Swarbrick, said that his office was not going to spend any considerable time going over the findings as it was some eight years old. However, he said that the issues raised by his predecessor in the old report are almost identical to those his office is still raising in the more recent reports relating to procurement.
Following its release, Duguay pointed out that it wouldcertainly have been far more useful if his work had been issued earlier as the main problems could have been probed and resolved much quicker.
“It raised several important points but the most important one is that contracts were issued without tender. There is also good evidence that local contractors could have done a good job at nearly the same costs but they were not permitted to bid,” Duguay said.
He also pointed to issues concerning not adhering to building standards, which have unfortunately proven to be true as the homes are now rusting out.
The publication of the old report comes in the wake of news from the current National Housing and Development Trust that the new homes currently being constructed under the initiative will no longer be sold but rented and the admission that building genuinely affordable homes in the Cayman Islands for those that cannot buy on the open market is impossible.
Plagued with problems from the get-go, the current NHDT boar chair Rayal Bodden and the general manager Julius Ramos said that these issues are now behind the trust. The men said that the public could rest assured that not only are the houses now being developed by the Trust up to standard but that the money it handles is also all accounted for.
“The NHDT has carefully considered recommendations of old audits and investigation reports and implemented effective systems to ensure proper checks and balances,” the officials said in a statement released Friday. “This has resulted in a good working relationship with the Auditor General’s Office for the past few years.”
The NHDT is also in the process of developing a new website that will include meeting minutes, financial statements, the publication scheme, NHDT’s public service information and application forms, as well as a “Homes-For-Sale” database.
In the meantime, the trust encouraged interested parties to make Freedom of Information requests to foi.nhdt @gov.ky
Retaled articles:
See AG's report here
See statement from NHDT below.
Procedural problems continue to plague FOI
(CNS): In her latest decision over a Freedom of Information dispute the information commissioner has upheld a decision by the National Pensions Office to redact some of the documents it finally released. However, in her ruling Jennifer Dilbert highlighted the procedural problems that continue to plague FOI. The process of the request had taken “an inordinately long time”, and while significant records were released in the end, some were not disclosed until the course of the commissioner’s latest hearing, two years after the original request.
“With a timely and correct application of the FOI Law, these documents could have been reviewed, redacted as necessary, and disclosed much earlier, sparing the Applicant, the ICO, the NPO and the Legal Department much time and resources,” Dilbert said.
In this latest appeal an applicant had been refused access by the National Pensions Office to audited accounts and records of correspondence relating to Multiple and Single Employer pension plans. Following the Information Commissioner’s Decision 16 last year a significant number of records were disclosed, but some information was redacted.
As a result of those redactions relating to personal information, with the exception of two words the commissioner upheld the decision by the public authority to black out other words. Dilbert said that apart from one instance, the information consists solely of the names or signatures of officials in the various private sector companies associated with the pension plans
However, in her full decision she points to the delays caused to the hearing by a mixture of missed deadlines by the both the NPO and the Legal Department, which was acting for them, and that department’s late involvement and subsequent objections to various procedural matters, which required the ICO to take legal advice.
See the commissioner’s full decision below.
British ministers’ private texts may be subject to FOI
(The Guardian): UK Ministers' text messages as well as emails sent from private accounts could be subject to public scrutiny, the government has conceded. The Cabinet Office will shortly issue new guidance to ministers and officials, making clear that decisions on whether information is subject to the Freedom of Information Act depend on the nature of the information and not the format in which it is held. It comes after the Department for Education dropped a battle to prevent the release of details of an email sent by Michael Gove, the secretary of state, from his wife's private account. The information commissioner, Christopher Graham, ruled this year that the email should have been released following a request by the Financial Times.
The principle of the accessibility of ministers' texts and private emails was set out clearly last December by the information commissioner, who said: "Information held in non-work personal email accounts (eg Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail) may be subject to the Freedom of Information Act if it relates to the official business of the public authority."
Public encouraged to ask for info on RTK Day
(CNS): The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is celebrating Right to Know Day Friday and is encouraging everyone to file information requests with government about the things they want to know. With the theme of “It's yours just ask”, the office is encouraging people to use the law. According to the latest statistics from the office, since the introduction of the law, which has seen a sea change in the relationship between the government and the public, well over 2,300 requests to government have been made. The ICO heralds the success of the law as it has begun to influence public authorities to proactively publish information.
While there are still problems with some government agencies and although information managers seem to be taking longer to respond to request, on the whole the government is releasing more information than ever before.
As part of raising awareness about the law, the ICO is asking everyone to wear blue on Friday and then join them at Market at the Grounds on Saturday morning for the coconut festival.
See the full statistics report and more details about the RTK campaign and events below.
Information abuse could land controllers in jail
(CNS): The working group that is drafting a local data protection law has recommended that those convicted of abusing it could face a jail term of as much as five years as well as financial penalties of as much as $250,000. Deputy Information Commissioner Jan Liebaers, who discussed the implementation of the new law with CNS recently, explained that there had been considerable discussion amongst the group about the need for a significant deterrent. He said information controllers could be fined $100,000 for refusing or failing to comply with an order from the information commissioner but could face as much as a quarter of a million dollar penalty for a deliberate contravention of the law.
Staring with fines of $5,000 and maximum terms of five years, Liebaers said the group was seeking meaningful enforcement for the legislation once it was passed. He added that the comparable maximum monetary penalty in the United Kingdom is £500,000, intended as a deterrent for serious wrongdoers.
In Cayman, the group has proposed a top penalty of up to $250,000 for a serious deliberate contravention of the law by a data controller that is “likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress”, and where the data controller was likely to know or ought to have known that this would be the case.
Liebaers emphasized, however, that the introduction of the law is not just about policing personal information and enforcement. He hoped that would have only a small role in the way the new law would work as the goalwas to manage personal data responsibly and appropriately and to prevent abuse in the first instance.
The Information Commissioner’s Office will be responsible for the law and, once passed, existing sections of the FOI law that deal with the protection of personal information will be transferred.
Speaking at a press briefing this week regarding Right to Know Day, Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert assured the public that the implementation of a Data Protection Law would not undermine the public’s right to information from government. She said this law was about protecting sensitive personal data held by all entities in both the public and private arenas and not public information held by government.
IMs push on FOI limit
(CNS): Although many public authorities are publishing more information proactively and releasing more information, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has identified a worrying trend in its latest statistical analysis of how the law is working. While the proportion of requests granted in full or in part has increased since the law came into force in 2009, the time authorities take to do it is getting longer. The median average time in the first year was 21 days, But instead of decreasing, information managers are now taking an average of 30 days, which is the limit that the law allows.
Deputy Information Commissioner Jan Liebaers said on Tuesday that since the implementation of the law, some 2318 requests had been logged into the government system; however, the statistics were not accurate as they were aware that some requests were never logged, so the figure was likely to be higher. While more information was now being released by information managers, the bad news was they are taking longer.
“The thirty day rule is not a target; it is the maximum time allowed,” Liebaers stated at a press briefing to announce the launch of this year’s Right to Know week activities. He said that it was an unexpected trend, especially against the backdrop of more information being released. The statistics revealed that government is well over the legal time line when the mean average rather than the median is calculated, pushing the stats up to almost 60 days. It is apparent, therefore, that while some authorities are releasing information within the parameters of the law, others are taking months to do so.
Jennifer Dilbert, the information commissioner, pointed to the importance of the deadlines, which to the applicant waiting on the request already seemed a long period.
Despite a number of issues that stillneed to be addressed, overall people were using the law and FOI is making a difference, Dilbert said. “One of objectives of the law is to have a better informed public and we feel that’s happening and we are pleased with progress of law,” she said, noting that the goal was to make government more transparent and accountable and that was working.
Nevertheless, the commissioner said she still wanted to see more proactive disclosure of information and pointed to the need for IMs to demonstrate more clearly to applicants why information was being withheld. She said it is not enough for the public authorities to cite an exemption in the law without explaining to applicants the reason why it applies in the given case. Dilbert said that at the appeal and hearings stage her office was seeing too broad an approach, with authorities citing lots of exemptions without really understanding if they actually apply.
Right to Know day takes place on Friday 28 September but the office will be taking part in a number of events throughout the week to encourage more people to use the law under the theme, ‘It’s yours just ask’.
For more information go to www.infocomm.ky