Superintendent Hansen contradicts Tarvin’s wild claims about $2000 CPRA requests (while Tarvin quietly backpedals on Facebook). Westwell: “She is no longer credible – she is creating and spreading misinformation.”

December 13, 2017, OVSD Trustee Gina Clayton Tarvin stated unequivocally (her usual typos notwithstanding) on Facebook that “Each CPRA (public information request from citizens) costs the district almost $2000 in attorney fees…”

With zero back-up for her strange and seemingly false claim, the information was embraced by several of her supporters and several citizens were verbally attack for “wasting” tens of thousands of dollars.

One week later, Tarvin, according to the edit history on Facebook, went in and altered the language to read “can” cost the district… Was this backpedalling in reaction to the firestorm of criticism she received for her heavy-handed attempt to shut down public questions? Did her pricey, tax-payer funded lawyers insist she do it? We may never know – but here is the proof:

Concerned, Trustee Norm Westwell wrote this several days after Tarvin’s outlandish claims:

“I have requested information from the district as to the average cost for the district to process a single CPRA request for the years 2016 and 2017 and am currently awaiting a responsive reply.  I have received  (see below) an approximate break down of the costs from Superintendent Hansen.  I hope this helps answer your question as to the high CPRA costs.”

Here is Superintendent Hansen’s reply:

“First, please keep in mind that the complexity of each CPRA request varies greatly.  We don’t keep metrics on the exact cost of each CPRA request.  Furthermore, most CPRAs require staff time from me, Executive Assistant Cindi Lee, and often times IT Director Rick Larson.  Due to the recent increase in requests (many times include multiple requests from one individual at or around the same time), we have had to pay additional employees overtime to research records and organize and compile required materials.   In addition, many CPRA requests require the intervention of an attorney.  For example, a CPRA request may require 6-7 hours of attorney hours (@$250 per hour) and staff overtime (3 hours at $60 per hour), plus the regular daily rate of the employee who is working on the request.  Just using this simple calculation, $2,000 is a realistic estimate for some of the more complex records requests.”

Obviously, Hansen’s version of the CPRA pricing system does not jive with Tarvin’s claims – at least the first, incendiary version that Tarvin posted. But this is simply her way of spreading destructive propaganda on line, as she did recently when she accused Westwell of “organizing” a “wasteful” recall against her (why is it “wasteful” if citizens want rid of her?)

I reached out to Trustee Westwell and received this reply:

If those are indeed Trustee Tarvins’s words, then  she is again creating and spreading “mis-information” as she likes to say.  In my experienced opinion they are called lies. And, in my opinion, all well calculated to try to save her increasingly toxic political persona from further corrosion.  When things to wrong, it is her MO to play victim.  She has over used this ploy rendering it as useless as the boy who cried wolf.  She is not longer credible. For the record;  How can I be more clear?…. I did not say what she has written below.  Period.  In my opinion, she has repeatedly demonstrated she does not have any problem just making things up to suit her needs and she has done so yet AGAIN in this case.

More as this develops.