Laura H. Ortiz v. Lowell, City of - City Solicitor (SPR 20200501)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Rebecca S. Murray Supen•isor ofR ecords March 24, 2020 SPR20/0501 John R. Hucksam, Jr., Esq. Assistant City Solicitor City of Lowell Law Department 375 Merrimack Street, 3rd Floor Lowell, MA O1 852 Dear Attorney Hucksam: I have received the petition of Laura Ortiz appealing the response of the City of Lowell (City) to a request for public records. G. L. c. 66, § lOA; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). Specifically, on September 13, 2019, Ms. Ortiz requested the "DPW School Dude report and Microsoft Outlook report regarding requested repairs for all Lowell public schools from May 1, 2019 to September 13, 2019." Ms. Ortiz requested that the School Dude report be provided to her in Excel/CSV format. Prior appeals The requested records were the subject of prior appeals. See SPRl 9/2015 and SPR20/0086 Determinations of the Supervisor of Records (Supervisor) (October 17, 2019 and January 29, 2020). Given that the City indicated it would provide Ms. Ortiz with the responsive records once all necessary redactions were completed, I closed SPRl 9/2015. The City provided Ms. Ortiz with the responsive DPW School Dude report ( dude report); however, it did not provide the Microsoft Outlook report. In my January 29th determination, I found that it was unclear whether the City has only withheld or redacted the door numbers or door descriptions; room windows or window descriptions or other descriptive locations of repairs that have not been completed by September 13th, the date of Ms. Ortiz's request. I found that the City did not meet its burden in responding to Ms. Ortiz's September 13th request for the Microsoft Outlook report. As a result, I ordered the City to provide Ms. Ortiz with the dude report within ten business days. One Ashburton Place, Room 1719, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 • (617) 727-2832• Fax: (617) 727-5914 sec.state.ma.us/pre • pre@sec.state.ma.us

John R. Hucksam, Jr., Esq. SPR20/0501 Page 2 March 24, 2020 Current appeal In a March 9, 2020 petition, Ms. Ortiz petitioned the Supervisor based on the dude report she received in Adobe .pdf, and the City not providing the Microsoft Outlook report. Ms. Ortiz requested the dude report be provided in its natural Excel/CSV format, as it had been provided to her in the past pertaining to requests she made in 2019. It is Ms. Ortiz's contention that the City is refusing to do so. In her petition, regarding the requested dude report, she states, "[f]urther the [City's] continued refusal to allow for the columns that we do not need to be hidden prior to printing it (the prior Solicitors all reasonably agreed to hide these columns and recorded at the [Public Records Division] to save their own time on redacting [was] the only reason we accepted this record at any time as a .pdf conversion." Whereas, the City has not provided Ms. Ortiz with the dude report in the requested natural Excel/CSV format, and has not provided Ms. Ortiz with the Microsoft Outlook report, I find that the City has not met its burden of responding to the request for these records. Order Accordingly, the City is ordered to provide Ms. Ortiz with requested records, in a manner consistent with this order, the Public Records Law and its Regulations as soon as practicable. A copy of any such response must be provided to this office. It is preferable to send an electronic copy of this response to this office at pre@sec.state.ma.us. Sincerely, Rebecca S. Murray Supervisor of Records cc: Laura Ortiz