Milestone charter's credit fraud has produced no criminal charges
Milestone charter's credit fraud has produced no criminal charges
Milestone Academy is the latest New Orleans–area charter school where theft has gone unpunished for months after it was...
Milestone Academy is the latest New Orleans–area charter school where theft has gone unpunished for months after it was discovered. No one has filed charges against former chief executive D'Juan Hernandez for putting $13,000 of personal expenses on a school credit card, according to an audit released Monday (April 18).
Hernandez quit in June 2014. The audit covers only the rest of that calendar year, but new Milestone chief executive LaKeisha Robichaux said Monday nothing had changed. In addition, Jefferson Parish clerk records showed no case against Hernandez.
This is hardly the first time that it's taken months for local charter school employees to face criminal charges for alleged financial crimes. Typically, lax oversight lets a member of the finance team profit from wrongdoing until someone notices odd gaps in the reports.
Ten months after someone stole almost $70,000 from the KIPP charter network, a criminal investigation was still underway.
Someone stole almost $26,000 from Lake Area New Tech High in 2014; more than a year later, police had not found a culprit.
New Orleans Military/Maritime Academy employee Darral Sims took $31,000 during the 2011-12 school year but had not been charged as of early 2013.
Lusher accountant Lauren Hightower had not been charged with a crime more than a year after she paid herself $25,000.
The Center for Popular Democracy issued a report in 2015 blaming Louisiana state education officials for cutting corners on oversight.
At Milestone, the theft followed a tumultuous year. The governing board dropped its for-profit management company only a couple of months before school was to start. Hernandez, the board attorney, stepped in to run the school. The school also struggled to improve long-languishing academic results and faced losing its Old Jefferson campus. It has since moved to Gentilly.
Hernandez quit in June, saying he was sick of a power struggle that also resulted in the departure of the principal. A month later, the financial wrongdoing emerged.
The board withheld $13,000 from Hernandez' $135,081 pay to cover the loss. It also "contacted the applicable law enforcement agencies regarding the unauthorized credit card usage," auditors from Hienz and Macaluso wrote. "However, as of the date of the audit report the school is not aware of any charges being filed in this matter. This was due to the lack of proper policies and procedures governing the acquisition and use of credit cards by the school."
Auditors said the school has since restricted credit card use to key employees. Under the new policies, no one may obtain a school credit card without written approval from the board's finance committee. All purchases "must have the same level of support as any other disbursement," auditors wrote. And school credit cards may not be used for personal purchases, cash advances or alcohol.
However, further conversations Monday showed the wheels of justice often did turn eventually:
The KIPP employee was prosecuted, spokesman Jonathan Bertsch said Monday. He added that although criminal charges took time, the charter group detected the crime within weeks.
Simms was convicted and paid restitution, Military/Maritime Academy Principal Cecilia Garcia said. The case went to court in late 2014 and early 2015. However, Simms has since had his record at least partially expunged, according to Garcia and Orleans Parish sheriff's records.
Hightower was prosecuted and convicted, Lusher spokeswoman Heather Harper Cazayoux said. Hightower's LinkedIn account indicates that she now works as a florist at a Harvey Winn-Dixie.
Former Arise Schools employee Quinton Barrow pleaded guilty on May 7, 2015, to stealing $9,000. He was ordered to pay restitution but then failed to appear to pay in June, according to Orleans Parish sheriff's records.
And the biggest local charter school crime resulted in serious jail time: Langston Hughes Academy's financial manager was sentenced to five years in federal prison for stealing about $660,000.
An employee stole about $2,000 from Lake Forest Charter in 2013. As of early 2015, the school's board president would not identify the employee or say whether anyone had been charged. School leaders did not immediately respond to a request for an update.
By Danielle Dreilinger
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Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch Independent Studio for the Time's Up Era
Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch Independent Studio for the Time's Up Era
PatMa has already forged strategic partnerships with several organizations with shared common values, including the...
PatMa has already forged strategic partnerships with several organizations with shared common values, including the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Center for Popular Democracy and Planned Parenthood. The studio, whose formation was orchestrated by CAA, Evolution Media and top attorney Cliff Gilbert-Lurie, is designed to create content across platforms, including film and TV, theater, and publishing.
Read the full article here.
The Eugenicist Doctor and the Vast Fortune Behind Trump’s Immigration Regime
The Eugenicist Doctor and the Vast Fortune Behind Trump’s Immigration Regime
Since the 2016 election, according to a report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Wall Street behemoths JPMorgan...
Since the 2016 election, according to a report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Wall Street behemoths JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo, and BlackRock have all increased their shares in the nation’s two largest prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, financing the growth of a $5 billion industry with gargantuan loans: the two companies are now carrying a total of $1.94 billion and $1.18 billion in debt, respectively.
Read the full article here.
After Volkswagen scandal, can consumers trust anything companies say? (+video)
After Volkswagen scandal, can consumers trust anything companies say? (+video)
Adam Galatioto’s loyalty to diesel Volkswagens predates his ability to drive. The 29-year-old’s parents...
Adam Galatioto’s loyalty to diesel Volkswagens predates his ability to drive.
The 29-year-old’s parents first bought a Jetta TDI in 1998, and he drove the little sedan through high school, college, and a master’s program before selling it in 2013. Mr. Galatioto and his girlfriend now share a 2011 Jetta TDI SportWagen, which he helped encourage her to buy.
“They get really good mileage,” he says. “Mine got 50 m.p.g. on the highway. By proxy that means you are being environmentally friendly.”
He’s not alone. Volkswagen has long enjoyed a reputation for reliable engineering, cheerful affordability, and, largely thanks to its efforts in clean diesel, sustainability. In Consumer Reports’ 2014 survey on how people perceive leading car brands, the German automaker was singled out (alongside Tesla) for its fuel efficiency.
That made recent revelations that VW had duped environmental regulators for years, installing software on 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide allowing them to run cleaner during emissions tests than they did on the road, all the more unnerving.
“I don’t generally trust corporations on what they say, and this was so intentionally devious it just lumps them in with any other car company for me,” Galatioto says.
This is a worst-nightmare scenario for companies trying to attract customers that increasingly want to make not just quality or affordable purchases, but ethical ones. It’s an impulse nearly every consumer industry is racing to capitalize on, from restaurant chains shifting to cage-free eggs and fair-trade coffee to retailers pledging to raise wages and give workers more predictable scheduling.
But with such promises being made left and right, and especially in the wake of Volkswagen’s fall, conscientious consumers may be wondering: Can any of them really be trusted?
Not always, clearly, but there is some comfort to be had on that front. Brands that fail to deliver risk even greater financial and reputational fallout than ever before (Volkswagen lost a third of its stock value when the scandal broke, and it faces billions in future losses from EPA fines, repairs, and lost sales). Combined with effective third-party oversight, it’s a powerful motivator for companies on the whole to behave better, experts say.
Consumers, particularly younger ones, are armed with easier access to information about what they buy than previous generations, and it’s affecting their choices. Millennials (adults ages 21 to 34) are more than twice as likely as their Gen-X and baby boomer counterparts to be willing to pay extra for products and services billed as environmentally and socially sustainable, according to a 2014 Nielsen survey. They are equally more prone to check product labels for signs of sustainable and ethical production.
“There’s an increased attention to more intangible characteristics of a product,” says Dutch Leonard, a professor who teaches corporate responsibility and risk management at Harvard Business School. “When I buy a shirt, it has a particular color, it’s soft, or wrinkle-free. But now people are also paying attention to where it was made, if the workers are being exploited, and if the company is environmentally conscious or not.”
This makes responsible changes effective marketing tools, which can create domino effects as companies try to keep up with and outdo standards in their particular industries. When Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world, raised its minimum pay rate at the beginning of this year, competitors such as Target and Kohl’s quickly followed suit. The success of Chipotle, which has a carefully detailed food-sourcing policy, has been followed by major supply chain overhauls for McDonald’s, General Mills, and other giants of the corporate food world.
“Customers want 'food with integrity,' ” Warren Solochek, a restaurant-industry analyst with NPD Group, a market-research firm, told the Monitor in May. “[Companies] that choose locally sourced, fresh ingredients can put that on their website and know that people are looking at it.”
But especially for major corporations, “when you say you are doing things, you will attract attention from outside business groups," Professor Leonard says. "You can bet some NGO [nongovernmental organization] is going to try and figure out if that’s true or not.”
Indeed, Volkswagen isn’t the first brand to have its positive positioning face pushback, especially as global companies work to strike an operational balance between ethics and profitability. Wal-Mart’s wage hikes were followed by cutbacks in worker hours when the retailer’s earnings suffered, a move that led labor advocacy groups to call the earlier wage hikes “a publicity stunt.” Earlier this week, the Center for Popular Democracyreleased a report showing that Starbucks has so far failed to live up to a much-publicized vow from a year ago to give workers more consistent schedules.
While Volkswagen eluded the Environmental Protection Agency, it was eventually found out by the International Council on Clean Transportation, an independent nonprofit aided by researchers at West Virginia University.
In addition to catching such discrepancies, watchdog groups can be helpful in weeding out credible claims of positive change from the less so. In the mid-2000s, the Unions of Concerned Scientists’ annual environmental consumer guide largely dispelled the idea that washable cloth diapers are significantly better for the environment than disposable ones.
Furthermore, some major corporations and industry groups have partnerships with independent, NGO-like organizations to set ethical industry standards and submit to outside monitoring. Unilever, for example, teamed up with the the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the 1990s to create the Marine Stewardship Council, a certification program for sustainable fisheries. In 2008, Starbucks embarked on a decade-long project with Conservation International to improve the sustainability of its coffee supply around the world. Home Depot sells lumber certified by an outside organization.
Such collaborations may not catch everything, Leonard says, but they are effective because they are “constructed in such a way that the [certification groups] are not beholden to an industry. We may not be able to get full agreement on the standards, but we might make real progress by creating safe harbors through development of standards that are negotiated in advance.”
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Next labor fight is over when you work
Commercial Appeal - 05.24.2015 - WASHINGTON — If there's one labor issue that has come to the forefront of political...
Commercial Appeal - 05.24.2015 - WASHINGTON — If there's one labor issue that has come to the forefront of political agendas over the past few years, it's the minimum wage: Cities and states around the country are taking action to boost worker pay, as federal efforts seem doomed to fail.
But a new wave of reform is already in the works. Instead of how much you earn, it addresses when you work — pushing back against the longstanding corporate trend toward timing shifts exactly when labor is needed, sometimes in tiny increments, or at the very last minute.
That practice, nicknamed "just-in-time" scheduling, can wreak havoc on the lives of workers who can't plan around work obligations that might pop up at any time.
Right now, community groups and unions in Washington, D.C., are formulating a bill that will address the problem of schedules that can be both shifting and inflexible. The labor-backed group Jobs With Justice says it likely will include a requirement that employers provide workers with notice of their schedules a few weeks ahead of time, and that additional hours go to existing employees, rather than spreading them across a large workforce.
"The one thing we're finding overwhelmingly is that people aren't getting enough hours to make ends meet," says Ari Schwartz, a campaign organizer at D.C. Jobs With Justice. "People aren't getting their schedules with enough time to plan child care and the rest of the things in their lives."
When a proposal gets to the D.C. Council, Washington won't be the first: After passage of landmark legislation in San Francisco, bills have been offered in Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut, California, New York, Michigan and Oregon. Along with new proposals to expand paid sick day legislation, they are a bid to give workers more control over how they spend their time.
"These scheduling reforms are getting really popular, because it makes no sense that, for example, you're required to be available to work by your employer and you're not picked for that time," says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. "People who don't suffer these abuses already understand what it's like to juggle work and family, so people really identify with that as being a problem."
Carrots and sticks
Twenty years ago, schedules weren't as much of a problem. Working in retail, especially, tended to be a solid 9-to-5 job.
Then retail hours grew longer. And then came computerized scheduling, which allowed employers to best fit staffing to demand. Here's what that looks like in practice: Handing out schedules based on what times of day or the month you expect the most business, splitting up hours across a large workforce that is available on a moment's notice, and sometimes sending people home if traffic is slow.
That helps companies optimize their labor costs, but it wreaks havoc on the lives of low-wage workers, who don't know how much they're going to make from week to week, and often can't schedule anything else around work.
One worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is still employed there, has worked in the hot food prep section of the Whole Foods in Washington, D.C., for 12 years. She liked it; the pay wasn't bad, and the people were friendly. She worked consistently from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and took a second job as a nanny in the afternoons, which added around $300 a week to her income — more money to send home to her father in El Salvador, and to support her daughter in college in Tennessee.
But then, a new manager cut back hours; some people left and weren't replaced. The schedule posted on the wall started to shift the worker's days off, or tell her to come in from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. instead. Usually she got a week's notice, but once in a while she'd come to work and the schedule had already changed, so she'd have to go back home. After that happened on too many days, she had to drop the afternoon job. So once again, she was just squeaking by.
"She would come and say, ‘I really need you to cover this shift,' and it is what it is," the worker says in Spanish, through a translator. "Lots of us have lost lots of jobs."
It's been better over the past few months, she says. And that's not by accident: As public complaints surfaced about Whole Foods' scheduling practices, the company rolled out a new system that allows employees to see their schedules for two weeks in advance and prevents managers from changing them at the last minute or scheduling "clopenings" — both closing the store and opening it in the morning — without an employee's consent. The policy has been in place nationwide since early April, spokesman Michael Silverman says.
Whole Foods isn't alone. Walmart has also introduced a system of "open shifts," which allows workers to pick their own hours. Starbucks curbed some of its practices in the wake of a New York Times article last year that described their effect on one barista.
The Gap is working with the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of Law, University of California, in San Francisco to set up pilot projects around the country that would measure the impact of giving employees stable schedules and more hours. Many companies haven't considered how much their scheduling practices are actually costing them in the form of employee turnover, says Joan Williams, a UC law professor.
"If you don't count that cost, it disappears. The idea is to generate the kind of rigorous data that will be needed to persuade people to change their financial models," says Williams. "Our hypothesis is that if you provide people with more stable schedules, you'll see lower turnover [and] absenteeism and higher worker engagement."
In time, the business case may grow clear enough that more companies move toward stable schedules on their own. But Williams says legislative efforts are needed as well: A recent national survey found that 41 percent of early-career, hourly workers get their schedules less than a week in advance.
Legislative action
Last year, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction to pass comprehensive scheduling reform, with a set of companion bills that require "formula retailers" (i.e., large chains) to give workers two weeks' notice of their schedules, pay workers for the shifts when they're on call and give hours to current employees instead of hiring more, among other provisions. The law went into effect in January but won't be enforced until July.
Meanwhile, scheduling legislation is in the works around the country. National groups such as the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Womens Law Center are helping to build coalitions where scheduling reforms could prove politically palatable, in places such as New York — where the union-backed Retail Action Project has been advocating for "just hours" for years — and Minnesota, where the AFL-CIO-affiliated Working America has been building support among non-union members for measures that would benefit all workers.
But it hasn't been smooth sailing for the scheduling reform movement. A Maryland bill failed this year, in the face of employer opposition. And though there isn't even a bill yet in Washington, businesses are voicing skepticism.
"Any time you alter how employers hire, schedule or retain their workforce, if that flexibility makes D.C. less attractive to businesses, than I'm concerned about that," said Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. "The D.C. chamber is concerned about any restrictions on free enterprise."
It's perhaps more concerning to employers than even raising the minimum wage: That's just extra cost. Scheduling, by contrast, impacts the very core of how they've learned to do business.
Warren says Toys 'R' Us investors should augment worker fund
The toyseller's former private-equity owners said they were forming the fund on Tuesday after months of pressure from...
The toyseller's former private-equity owners said they were forming the fund on Tuesday after months of pressure from former employees and their representatives, along with some public pension funds and lawmakers including Warren, a former Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert who is considering a run for president in 2020. The groups, linked to the Center for Popular Democracy, estimate that workers are owed $75 million in severance pay, and they've also pressed Toys "R" Us creditors including Solus to pitch in.
Read the full article here.
Fed Up on Nightly Business Report
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014 ...
Nightly Business Report - November 11, 2014
Source
New Report: Anti-Scaffold Law Research is Junk
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 17, 2014 Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 17, 2014
Contact: TJ Helmstetter, Center for Popular Democracy (973) 464-9224; tjhelm@populardemocracy.org
"FATALLY FLAWED": ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE REPORT IS DEAD WRONG, BIASED
NEW REPORT PROVIDES WINDOW INTO INDUSTRY FRONT GROUP AND EFFORT TO GUT SAFETY LAW
CPD, NYCOSH: Scaffold Law Saves Lives, Protects Workers; Industry-Funded Rockefeller Institute "Report" is Junk
(NEW YORK) -- Today, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) released a paper entitled "Fatally Flawed: Why the Rockefeller Institute's Scaffold Law Report Doesn't Add Up." The report is in response to an earlier "report" funded by a construction industry-front group, that sought to gut worker protections known as the Scaffold Safety Law.
"The Cost of Labor Law 240 on New York’s Economy and Public Infrastructure" was released last month by the Rockefeller Institute at SUNY-Albany, commissioned by an $82,800 check from the "New York Civil Justice Institute,"* a front-group whose address is the same as the Lawsuit Reform Alliance, which has worked for years to weaken laws that make it possible for people to assert rights against abusive or negligent landlords, employers, and other business interests. The LRA itself has frequently been criticized as being a front group for the construction industry and other corporate interests.
*SOURCE: SUNY-Albany Division of Research, “Accent on Research,” Spring 2013 Newsletter, http://www.albany.edu/research/assets/springaccent2013.pdf (page 20)
"Industry front groups are putting construction profits first when they mislead the public to obscure the real stakes of this debate: workers' lives and safety on the job," said Josie Duffy, policy advocate at the Center for Popular Democracy. "The Scaffold Safety Law saves lives. Gutting it, as some are advocating, will harm workers and disproportionately put Latino and immigrant workers at risk. These groups should be ashamed of themselves for spending $82,000 on a junk report instead of making sure the workers who build our cities have the protection they need."
The Scaffold Safety Law is a critical safety protection for construction workers, who are increasingly Latino and immigrant. In fact, an earlier review of construction site accidents by the Center for Popular Democracy, published in an October 2013 report entitled "Fatal Inequality" starkly illustrated how important the Scaffold Law is because of the ongoing rates of injury in construction in New York, and notably, how the risks are disproportionately borne by immigrant workers and workers of color:
In 60% of those fatalities, the worker was Latino and/or immigrant, disproportionately high for their participation in construction work.
In New York City, 74% of fatal falls involved Latino and/or immigrant workers.
Today's report "Fatally Flawed" makes the following points, in detail:
The Rockefeller Institute’s report is fundamentally biased.
The Rockefeller Institute's report confuses correlation with causation.
The Rockefeller Institute's report ignores key facts about New York State & the construction industry.
The Rockefeller Institute's report compares apples & oranges to make a false point.
The Rockefeller Institute's report uses faulty math to claim rising rates & lost jobs.
The conclusion is simple: New York’s strong worker health and safety laws, such as the Scaffold Law, protect workers from unnecessary risk. And it is the inherently dangerous nature of construction at an elevation—not the laws designed to protect workers —that account for injuries on the job. Any attempt to water down key worker protections will simply expose more workers, and their families, to unnecessary risk of injury. New York cannot afford to turn back the clock on protecting our workers or our public safety.
Read the full report, "Fatally Flawed: Why the Rockefeller Institute's Scaffold Law Report Doesn't Add Up" for evidence and details.
NYCOSH & CPD also released a new one-pager explaining how the Scaffold Safety Law works, read it here.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health are proud partners in the newly launched Scaffold Safety Coalition. The Scaffold Safety Coalition is a diverse group of workers, advocates and organizations committed to protecting construction workers in New York State, creating a unified front in the fight to defend New York’s Scaffold Safety Law from industry-backed efforts to gut the law. On behalf of more than 1.5 million New Yorkers, the coalition has pledged to push for increased enforcement of New York’s construction safety standards. More information and a full list of partners in the Scaffold Safety Coalition is available at the coalition website: www.scaffoldsafetylaw.com.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY: The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
ABOUT THE NEW YORK COMMITTEE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH: The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) is a membership organization of workers, unions, community-based organizations, and workers’ rights activists. NYCOSH uses training, education, advocacy, and organizing to improve health and safety conditions in our workplaces, our communities, and our environment. Founded 35 years ago on the principle that workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths are preventable, NYCOSH works to extend and defend every person’s right to a safe and healthful workplace and community. Visit NYCOSH's website at: www.nycosh.org.
Protest Planned at St. Louis Fed
St Louis Business Journal - March 4, 2015, by Angela Mueller - A group of activists is planning a series of...
St Louis Business Journal - March 4, 2015, by Angela Mueller - A group of activists is planning a series of demonstrations Thursday outside several Federal Reserve district banks, including in St. Louis.
The demonstrations are intended to highlight the rising unemployment rates among minorities and to urge officials not to raise interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"The Federal Reserve has the power - and responsibility - to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities," the Economic Policy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based liberal think tank that is backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
Demonstrations are planned for outside the regional Fed banks in New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas and St. Louis.
Source
Group Seeks All Drafts of Scaffold Law Report
Capitol Confidential - August 20, 2014, by Casey Seiler - The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed advocacy...
Capitol Confidential - August 20, 2014, by Casey Seiler - The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed advocacy group that supports New York’s controversial Scaffold Law, has filed an appeal of its initial Freedom of Information Law request for all communications between SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance, the business-backed anti-Scaffold Law group that paid almost $83,000 for an analysis of the law’s economic impacts.
That report, made public in February, has been the subject of fierce debate — concerning the details of the Institute’s report as well as larger issues of academic integrity. The Rockefeller Institute subsequently backed away from the most controversial chapter of the report, which included a statistical analysis that concluded gravity-related accidents fell in Illinois after the state ditched its version of Scaffold Law.
Scaffold Law, which places “absolute liability” on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a “comparative negligence” standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The initial FOIL request from the Center for Popular Democracy resulted in SUNY’s release of email communications between Rockefeller Institute researchers and Tom Stebbins of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance — contact that was required by the contract for the report.
On appeal, SUNY released an initial draft copy of the report that had been attached to one of those emails. The TU last week offered a side-by-side comparison of the draft and final versions.
The Center is now requesting to see all subsequent drafts of the report. “Given that the anti-worker groups behind this debunked report are still trying to use its flawed findings to weaken New York’s safety laws, SUNY should release all of the drafts that we know exist,” said the group’s Josie Duffy. “What we saw in the one draft that SUNY did release was disturbing enough, but we still don’t have a full accounting of how this study was manipulated.”
A SUNY spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment — though it’s unlikely the system would have anything to say about the mere filing of a FOIL request.
Here’s the Center’s FOIL appeal:
Center FOIL appeal
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