As we approach the midpoint of Mayor Emanuel’s first term, I think I’ve discovered one of his greatest legacies to Chicago, right up there with dismantling public education and making Mayor Daley’s god-awful parking meter deal even worse.
Meanwhile he’s invented one of the great FOIA dodges of all time: I’d give you the stuff you want, but we threw it out.
CPS responded that “the district does not maintain any documents responsive to your request.”
He knew CPS had lots of information on this matter because he’d read about it in the Tribune. In that article, CPS officials boasted about how they’d left no stone unturned in their effort to make the selection process as fair and objective as possible. They said the process considers data such as home-ownership rates in the students’ census tracts and the share of homes where English isn’t the primary language.
“CPS responded [by] stating that the records requested by Mr. Krell ‘have never been maintained by [CPS] and do not exist.’”
“That is what lawyers would call a nonresponsive answer,” says Jeffrey P. Smith, a public interest attorney who’s battled his hometown of Evanston on more than one records issue over the years. “The AG didn’t ask CPS if they maintained the information—they asked if they ever had it.”
