Gosh, it can’t be the money, can it? There must be something else going on. The juxtaposition is priceless. From Tom Nelson:
UVA spends $500,000 on lawyers when it would cost only $8,000 to deliver public documents?
Commonwealth Foundation – Mann: From Transparency Champion to ‘Bully’ Victim
UVA has been resisting (spending about $500,000 on outside lawyers for the effort) a similar, previous request by Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who is investigating Mann under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.
That the e-mails are public documents seems clear. Mann, while a professor at the school, used an e-mail account at least partially paid for by taxpayers. Just as an elected official’s or state worker’s official correspondence is open to the public, so is a professor’s at a state school.
…
The school estimated it would cost up to $8,000 to deliver the e-mails. That sounds high, but then we do not know how much of a mess their backup servers are. Whatever the accurate cost, if Marshall and friends will pay it, they do not deserve any more hassle from UVa than any other citizen seeking public records.
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UVA is entering into a very spicy legal arena. As someone pointed out, much of Mann’s funding is surely federal, and a percentage goes into the U’s general fund as “indirect cost recovery” or some such term. In many cases it’s in the realm of $.45 on the dollar.
The rub here is where the legal defense dollars are coming from. The feds won’t allow their funding dollars to fight legal battles, so the money has to come from other sources….and THAT is something the taxpayers are entitled to know…which further complicates the issue.
Now, there’s grounds for another FOIA request….where the defense money is coming from. And let UVA defend themselves to the foundation donors, taxpayers, and anyone else whose funding the place.
Taxpayers paying to defend UVA from revealing information the taxpayers request on information taxpayers paid for??
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Being more or less a libertarian, I think there are issues here worth well more than $500K, and not necessarily “coverup”-related. Distinguishing at a constitutional level what is rightly to be considered public and what is private is a core issue for Americans.
In this case, given the public finding of such universities as UVa, it seems likely that the work of employees of the uinversity performed on university-owned equipment is probably public and subpoenable.
The more the university resists the more difficult it is going to be for them to claim ignorance of the activities of their departments and the more embarrassing. Parents might question the worth of an education for their sons and daughters at UAV.
It’s not the smell of money that emanates from this, it’s that of what is their underwear. They certainly don’t want certain things to be made public. In any case, it’s still public money, so you can add this on top and demand the documents and emails relating to this decision.
The Roanoke Times sure has changed since I was a kid .
They will take the consequences and destroy the e-mails and say they were mistaken when the said they found them and were right the first time when they said they were missing.
latitude says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:42 am
JohnWho says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:34 am
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
===============================================
John, they have released other people’s work, no questions asked.
Perhaps because the lack of principles would not have been exposed?
The University has taken sides. When asked for materials about Pat Michaels (skeptic), they complied promptly, I believe. They know full well there’s no ‘academic freedom’ issue here.
glacierman says: “They had their chance to distance themselves from Mann but chose to join the fray and go all in with a cover up. One only has to ask why.”
Should we consider the possibility that George Soros or a Large Left-wing Foundation has promised to cover their costs? “You keep them from unraveling our beautiful, world-wide global warming scam, and we’ll donate twice your legal costs.”
Very soon (2013), UVa will have a Department of Wanker Studies. Guess who will be the Chair?
They act like they are hiding something.
Grandma says that indicates they are.
False piety in the ivory tower is not a virtue.
O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
Marmion by Sir Walter Scott.
pat says:
January 13, 2011 at 9:44 am
It is public university.
You are correct – and you also hit on the reason it will spend a fortune to save a penny. Colleges have no conception of a budget. In a recession, the only 2 things that continue to rise are government spending and college tuition.
Half million? Pocket change for the incoming Freshman class.
richard verney says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:28 am
I do not know how UVa is funded,
Like all “Public” colleges, it gets some of its money from the government (state) and some from students. In the case of Virginia Colleges, only about 25% comes from the government, the rest from students and endowments.
Did they not release other work to Greenpeace,not an issue of academic freedom there! and did they charge Greenpeace $8,000.
Virginia’s answer is simple, reduce the funding of the University until it delivers. If they want to hold onto the materials in the face of Freedom of Information requests, they shouldn’t be in charge of any state supported research.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and take a wild guess, but UVa hasn’t done so well in the “Wall street” department have they?
They’re not exactly famous for producing economic geniuses, and, so, maybe it is no wonder that they have invested so heavily in CAGW. :p
Perhaps the reason why the university is resisting is that they realize what a chilling effect it might have if all of their professors had to make all of their private e-mail correspondence public for any sort of politically-motivated fishing expedition.
Of course, people like Anthony Watts could show their good faith by making all of their own private e-mail correspondence public first. Otherwise, they seem to have little ground to complain about others not wishing to have all such correspondence made public.
REPLY: Joel, you’re on thin ice here, public funding means public ownership. Private means private ownership. I’m under no more obligation to release my private emails than say, Joe Romm or Al Gore is. I’m pretty sure if you ask them they’ll tell you to go take a flying leap at the moon. It has been proven in court that there is no expectation of privacy in public funded communications with issues of national security being excepted. Enabling access to these is the reason the FOIA exists. – Anthony
UVA has rather poor timing in pulling this stunt. States are rapidly approaching the bankruptcy cliff, and this sort of nonsense is going to come up again when the universities wish someone to save their floundering endowments and pension systems.
I wonder…. Could the current students of UVA pursue a class action suit (or other suitable legal action) against the university for financial malfeasance, if any of their tuition fees were used for this $500,000 act of obstruction of justice?
Same thing for misappropriated alumni contributions….. research grant funds…. or taxpayer funds?
I’m just a simple country engineer… Any lawyers out there, with knowledge in this area of jurisprudence?
A few years back, a Member of Congress had the audacity to suggest that academics receiving government grants should account for how they spent those grants. The roar of outrage (from the academics) was deafening. “An insult to professionalism!” they cried. And the issue went away. This seems no different. You (the taxpayer) are not entitled to know how we (the enlightened) spend the money you owe us for saving the planet.
Hmmm. Seems to me that he who pays the piper should call the tune.
Y’all don’t want to release what we paid for, then we should stop paying for it.
But that’s mean …
Just who is this Whom of whom you speak.
Anthony:
(1) Public funding has never meant that academics surrender all rights of privacy and intellectual property. For example, NSF has clearly stated that the computer code developed under their grants remains the intellectual property of the researcher.
(2) While you might feel that you are under no obligation to release such things, don’t you think it would be a good gesture to show how you are willing to do so just to set a good example?
(3) Would you be taking the same position if it was a Democratic attorney general on a witchhunt demanding all the e-mails from Roy Spencer and John Christy so he could investigate the circumstances under which their initial satellite record analysis got a trend that was so far off the mark until others pointed out errors that they had to correct?
Mac the Knife, remember you can sue for anything, no matter what about and what for. On the note of academic freedom, Bull$&!, They took my money knowing full well that i or any other American can and should be able to ask for ALL the information at any time. There is no “academic freedom” when it comes to taxpayers money being involved. IMO.
Wow, Joel, your ignorance of this distinction is staggering. Statements like these, that defend the faith at all costs regardless of [] legitimacy, really call into question your objectivity.
Mark