How close is Wilmington to the Buccini/Pollin Group? It'll cost you about $20,000 to find out

The Buccini/Pollin Group is Wilmington's largest developer, the recipient of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded incentives and, if you ask Mayor Mike Purzycki, its founders are "our heroes." 

But if you want to dig into the company's relationship with top city officials, that will cost you. 

A city lawyer told The News Journal it would cost $21,946.70 to produce all correspondence — snail mail, email and text messages  — between BPG and top city officials from January 2017, when Purzycki took office, to the present. The lawyer later revised the quote to $17,601.69. 

"It doesn’t pass the smell test, does it?" said longtime City Councilwoman Loretta Walsh. "It’s the reason people don’t trust the government."

In an attempt to understand the relationship between the city and BPG, The News Journal filed a Freedom of Information Act request in September asking for correspondence between BPG and eight city officials:

• Mayor Purzycki
• Chief of Staff Tanya Washington
• John Rago, deputy chief of staff for policy and communications
• Tom Ogden, deputy chief of staff for fiscal and operations management
• Economic Development Director Jeff Flynn
• Former Housing Director Leonard Sophrin
• Current Housing Director Robert Weir
• Police Chief Robert Tracy

John Flaherty, director of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, called the bill "extortion."

"They’re embarrassed to have the greater public fully understand the degree of influence," he said. "It's a real sham, in my opinion, that the city would do this."

Purzycki has a close relationship with BPG. Company founders Rob and Chris Buccini each donated the maximum allowable amounts for individuals to Purzycki's 2016 run for mayor. BPG executive Mike Hare chaired Purzycki's campaign and his transition executive committee. 

The two parties had a relationship when Purzycki headed the Riverfront Development Corporation and BPG was building condos, apartments and a hotel there. 

Under Purzycki's mayoral leadership, BPG has continued to receive economic development support, including a $1 million grant for a south Wilmington sports complex.

"They should stand by their actions and let the public decide if there's anything inappropriate here," Flaherty said. 

On Monday, Rago declined to comment about the FOIA fees.

"I don't have any response to that," he said. 

In an email on Tuesday, Rago said the city law department is "following FOIA law and practices." He did not respond to a subsequent request for comment. 

State law allows government agencies to seek administrative fees for items that take more than one hour to process. The News Journal asked the administration twice to waive costs — as the law permits, according to the state FOIA manual — because the information is in the public interest. Assistant City Solicitor Bill Larson declined.

Larson said that just to locate all the snail mail between the city and BPG would cost $2,876.70.

He said that the request for emails was "too broad for it to be performed by the City’s IT Department with reasonable effort" and that a third party vendor, DLS Discovery, would need $14,470 to carry out the "burdensome" request. 

The News Journal suggested limiting the request for emails to only September through December 2017 to weed out unnecessary content and potentially narrow down the initial request. The cost of four months of emails? $985.20. 

To grab texts off of city iPhones, Larson quoted $700 per phone for a total of $3,500 for five phones. When The News Journal informed him of a $45 program that could do the work, Larson said it would take a $21-per-hour employee 10 hours to complete for a total of $254.99. 

Government agencies sometimes charge excessive amounts for public records in the hopes of scaring requesters off, according to Rick Blum, policy director of the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. 

"They shouldn’t be charging $20,000 to show the public what they’re doing," said Blum, who coordinates a coalition called the News Media for Open Government. "The government should always be open for business and open to citizens understanding how they’re operating." 

James DeChene, senior vice president of government affairs for Chamber of Commerce, said there are reasons a private company and a government it works with might want to keep their interactions under wraps. 

"If there's something there that is the secret sauce a company uses to be successful at what it does, I don't think they'd want it brought out," he said. "A lot of it is to maintain their ability to be nimble and competitive and not advertising to the world what their plans necessarily are."

In the past, the city and state have provided The News Journal and other groups with months or years worth of government correspondence for free. 

In September, the Delaware Department of State gave The News Journal thousands of emails in response to a request similar in scope to the one involving Wilmington and BPG. The state did it for no charge. 

Wilmington City Council absorbed the cost of providing The News Journal with an email dump pertaining to its discretionary fund debacle last year.

A request for governor's office emails about the dismantling of the Rodney Square bus hub came back heavily redacted, much to Flaherty's disappointment — but, Flaherty said, at least they were free.

"There is no consistency," Flaherty said. 

Rob Buccini did not respond to a request for comment.

City Councilman Sam Guy, who is an attorney, said the city should be able to easily grab emails from its system.  

"They're charging to discourage," he said. "The responses to this request, I expect, would open up the doors for the public to see how Monopoly operates from the inside."

In a separate request, The News Journal asked the state for correspondence between BPG and Gov. John Carney's office from January 2017 to the present. On Oct. 9, Associate Legal Counsel Alexandra Clapp said because of the "volume of records sought and the need for legal advice," the state would need to review and provide records on a rolling basis. 

She said to expect another response by Nov. 7. 

Contact Christina Jedra at cjedra@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2837 or on Twitter @ChristinaJedra.

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