Another FOIA Fishing Expedition

Halburn is well known for his FOIA fishing expeditions. And since the Secretary of State now has a searchable database of all requests filed with WV government agencies, his demands can now be read online.

His latest vendetta seems to be against West Virginia State University. He was demanding copies of emails and their criteria for what they constitute as working press.

The focus of his ire this time is WVSU Director for Public Relations Jack Bailey.
Once we saw the request shown below, it all made sense.

FOIA Request Items

Subject 
Inspection of Email

Details

“In response to your response to my March 16, 2016 FOIA request: As stated in my FOIA request, the author and recipient of requested emails is Jack Bailey. Additional authors and recipients can include Jerry Waters, Scott Edwards, Benjamin Newhouse, Raymond "Joe" Haynes, Steve Andes, Chris Walters, Kelli Sobonya, Bill Cole, and Mitch Carmichael. I am specifically looking for any emails that discuss Mark Halburn, Mark Hallburn, PutnamLIVE.com, DM, DH, PutnamLIES, PutnamLIES.blogspot.com, the PutnamLIES Facebook page, as well as discussion of any and all Facebook posts discussing all of the above.” “You can also add the phrases "the publisher" and "psycho publisher" to my list.”“Please see attached for two of the email addresses that I am looking for emails to and from. One of DM's email address is L****************2@gmail.com. Another could have a "tasty blends" or "Tasty Blends foods" as part of the email address.” “Other names include Lee Mays, Mark Sorsaia, Tyler Hollywood, Lawrence Smith, Cryptic Vullshit, Mark Smith, and Travis Castle.

Last month when WVSU was celebrating its 125th anniversary, we thanked WVSU for adding us to to the press list and giving us full access all to the events. The Blobby Blogger begged to be on the press list but was repeatedly denied.
That's what started his latest crusade.

Many of those who have stood up to him also get a shout-out.
Surprising that he left out Danny Jones and Judge Michael Kelly.

Dog Swim Cost Parks No More Than $250

Dog swim 2010 was not a very expensive project.

No more than $250 was spent by the Putnam County Parks and Recreation Department to maintain and operate Waves of Fun for the September 6th, Labor Day fundraiser.

Halburn goes through all sorts of contortions trying to prove that it cost an exorbitant amount of money to hold this event. And as usual, he lies to his shrinking readership.
He does this by including the week before in his costs. The pool closed for the season on August 29.



First of all you can't determine a day's cost by of electricity by dividing the total of the bill by 30 days. You can get an average cost, but not the true usage cost. Costs are based on peak and non peak hours. Nights, Saturday and Sundays are non peak times.
Weekends cost less than weekdays.
There is also the basic cost of operating the facility. Even during the winter when it's closed, it uses approximately 4000 kwh a month in electricity.

Using Hallburn's suspect math for utilities & chemicals, + Scott Williamson's personnel numbers it looks like the cost for the swim was somewhere around $211.25.

Electricity $93.75
Chemicals $37.50
Personnel $80.00
---------------------
Total $211.25

The pool was closed for the preceding 7 days. The water wasn't treated or filtered. Since the pumps weren't on there wasn't any wear and tear on them that week so that cost is zero.

The days the pool was closed is immaterial to the cost of the fundraiser. The day of the swim the water was treated then the next day the pool was drained.

Halburn just doesn't get it. He whines every year about the pools closing before labor day. He just can't seem to get it through his thick skull that you can't open a pool if you have no lifeguards.
The kids are back in school so there's no one to go to the pools anyway.
He thinks the pools should stay open just to serve him.
Should a pool stay open an extra week just to serve a handful of patrons?
We say no.
Would he be willing to pay an admission fee based on the number of swimmers that use the pool that week? We don't think so.

$211.25.
Not a big price to pay such for a good cause.
Karen Haynes, organizer of the Dog Swim, reported that the event raised exactly 1884.58 dollars this year.

Hallburn complains that the county doesn't do enough to fund the construction of a new animal shelter, but when they do he complains about that too. He is the worst type of hypocrite.

Halburn will do or say anything to put his political enemies in the worst light.
His petty personal vendettas are not news. He is not a journalist and his opinion blog is not a media outlet.