Tax Sale Nerd v. City of Cranston, 081718 RIAGO, AGO PR 18-22

• Case Date: August 17, 2018
• Court: Rhode Island

Tax Sale Nerd v. City of Cranston AGO PR 18-22 No. PR 18-22 Rhode Island Attorney General Opinion State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations August 17, 2018           Peter F. Kilmartin, Attorney General          Tax Sale Nerd          Re: Tax Sale Nerd v. City of Cranston          Dear Sir/Madam:          The investigation into your Access to Public Records Act ("APRA") complaint filed against the City of Cranston ("City) is complete.          On October 16,2017, you submitted an anonymous APRA request to the City seeking a "1) [c]opy of any and all contracts for title or auctioneer services for tax sale properties; 2) [a] list of all registered bidders at the 2017 tax sale, 3) [a] list of all properties sold at the 2017 tax sale and the name of the successful bidder; [and] 4) copies [of] any disclosures of conflict of interest made to the district by any tax sale title company or auctioneer applicant."          The following day, the City responded with two emails. The first e-mail stated:

"Cranston received the email request and needs 20 additional days to respond pursuant to the Act, due to the voluminous nature of your request."

         The second e-mail, sent shortly thereafter, stated:

"Please be advised that to retrieve the documents/information you requested will require an upfront payment of $2,000 to conservatively cover the labor costs incurred by the city."

         You anonymously filed this complaint the next day. In pertinent part, you relate:

"Mr. Rawson [the City Solicitor] dispatched an email attempting to extend the deadline to the responsive documents by twenty days. Unfortunately, Mr. Rawson fails to identify any specifics of how the specific APRA request before him was Voluminous.' Indeed, the request had four distinct requests *** however, they were all related to the same subject matter, the same city sale, and considering the City appointed as the agent for all the holders of tax collector's deeds (by statute), these documents should be readily available for inspection and should not need an extension of time to be provided.

Mr. Rawson's demand for $2,000 in upfront expenses is extortionate. Not only does Mr. Rawson fail to provide any details as to how he came to what he considers a 'conservative' estimate of costs, the responsive documents are limited in volume and should be no more than 200 pages of copies—although they should be provided electronically as requested. Nevertheless, it is hard to fathom that Mr. Rawson calculated 100 hours to gather documents responsive to four requests all related to the same subject matter."

         In response, we received a substantive response and affidavit from the City's Solicitor, Christopher Rawson, and Treasurer David Capuano. In pertinent part, Solicitor Rawson provides:

"2. On Monday, October 16, 2017, *** 'Tax Sale Nerd,' asked via email for a series of documents and/or information related to tax sale properties.

3. That same day, I forwarded Tax Sale Nerd's email request to David Capuano, the Treasurer for the City of Cranston and the Supervisor of the Tax Collection Department, who oversees any and all tax sales that occur in the City of Cranston, to inquire about his ability to respond to these requests.

4. Mr. Capuano communicated to me that his department would need time to respond to the request as much of the information and/or documents are not readily available and it will take some time and labor to search for all of the

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