NIAGARA COUNTY
Bridge panel faces suit for withholding Garlock data
LOCKPORT — Two Niagara County legislators filed suit Friday against the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, demanding that a court order the commission to come clean about the departure last year of its executive director.
Legislators John D. Ceretto, R-Lewiston, and Danny W. Sklarski, D-Town of Niagara, sued over the Bridge Commission’s rejection of their Freedom of Information requests for facts about the end of Thomas E. Garlock’s employment last summer.
The Bridge Commission, which consists of eight appointees — four each by the governor of New York and the premier of Ontario — operates the Rainbow, Whirlpool Rapids and Lewiston-Queenston bridges. It has used its binational nature to insist it is not subject to the state Freedom of Information Law.
Garlock, a Lockport resident, was executive director of the commission when its July 21 board meeting started, but by the end of the session he was unemployed.
It has never been divulged whether he resigned or was fired. Also, there have been rumors in the political community that he received a hefty severance package, possibly including lifetime health insurance, but the commission won’t discuss that, either.
The Buffalo News filed Freedom of Information requests with the commission shortly after that meeting, but the commission rejected them.
Ceretto and Sklarski made the same requests March 20, seeking Garlock’s contract, information about the severance package and a statement about whether Garlock quit or was fired.
An April 2 letter from commission Chairwoman Norma I. Higgs of Niagara Falls rejected the requests. The legislators appealed the rejection in a May 4 letter to Higgs from their lawyer, Charles E. Graney, of the Buffalo law firm Webster Szanyi. According to the lawsuit, there was no reply to the appeal.
“It’s the usual claim,” Higgs said Friday. “It’s a personnel matter. Nobody talks about personnel matters. Why should we? Everybody goes into executive session for personnel matters.”
Ceretto said, “I think any public agency, or anybody that makes decisions with public funds, should make anything, especially on the financial end, available.”
Sklarski said, “When you have a public entity like that, they have to be accountable, whether it’s to a public official like myself or an ordinary citizen.”
Commission attorney Adam Perry of Buffalo’s Hodgson Russ law firm said he hadn’t seen the lawsuit but told a reporter, “Our position remains the same as it has been.”
Robert J. Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, issued an opinion in 2003 that the Bridge Commission is subject to the Freedom of Information Law, but the commission ignored him.
State Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, held news conferences to prompt the commission into disclosures about Garlock and also wrote a letter to Gov. David
A. Paterson to try to obtain his help. Neither action produced results.
Maziarz said Friday that, according to state law, in lawsuits over Freedom of Information requests, if the public agency loses, it has to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees.
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