Dear Taranaki Regional Council,

I notice that you have recently declared three people to be "vexacious" and therefore out-rightly refused to provide responses to any future requests from them.

See:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-ne...

Given this almost unheard of decision from a local government I would request the following:

1) All documents related to this decision including any legal advice received, communication with the Office of the Ombudsmen or other external bodies and internal communication.
2) The figures and calculations used to provide the quoted estimate of the $30,000 as well as the period for which this was calculated.
3) Any internal communication discussing a potential submission to the recently released Law Commission report on the Official Information Act and Local Government Information Act or relating to a decision not to make such a submission.

I should note that I am in no way affiliated with the trio listed and am not making this request on their behalf. I am merely interested in the decision itself and the reasoning behind it.

I would prefer to receive an electronic response. Queries about this request will be automatically forwarded to me by the fyi.org.nz website.

With regards to s12 of the OIA, I am an NZ citizen and in NZ.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Millar

Dear Fred McLay,

In my request I asked for an electronic response. I would ask that this request be honoured unless there is a valid legal reason why it cannot be.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Millar

Dear Fred McLay,

The LGOIMA 1987 is crystal clear when it states:

"Subject to section 16, the local authority shall make the information available in the way preferred by the person requesting it unless to do so would—
(a)impair efficient administration; or
(b)be contrary to any legal duty of any local authority in respect of the document; or
(c)prejudice the interests protected by section 6 or section 7 and (in the case of the interests protected by section 7) there is no countervailing public interest."

You have stated that the only reason you wish to provide a postal copy is that you happen to have a copy on hand (and presumably no electronic copy?), this is far from reaching the standard required by (a). Therefore I continue to request that my response is received electronically.

I also fail to see how the time to scan a document into an electronic format (a procedure any modern multifunction printer can perform automatically) can take any significant length of time. It would almost certainly be less work to do that then it would be to go through the process of mailing a copy. If you really do intend to claim that the electronic requirement would move the time taken to respond to my request over one hour I would ask that you provide a breakdown of the estimated time taken to justify this decision. As it stands one could argue that the fact you wish to charge for an electronic copy is a somewhat cynical attempt to force me to accept the format you want to provide.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Millar