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Letter to the editor

VA public records? Pay $1.2-million

By PAUL DE LA GARZA
Published July 15, 2004

ST. PETERSBURG - The public records request asked for every document dealing with the troubled $472-million trial computer system at Bay Pines VA Medical Center.

The Department of Veterans Affairs told the St. Petersburg Times it would turn over the documents - for $1.2-million. It asked for the money up front in the form of a certified check or money order.

In return, the VA said, it would release as many as 10-million pages of documents. Estimated time of arrival: several years.

The estimated cost is more than double the $500,000 the VA recently paid Carnegie Mellon University to assess the computer system at Bay Pines. It is more than the $1-million a week the VA pays contractor BearingPoint to run the pilot program.

Bob Wright, the VA official who put the $1.2-million estimate together, said it was no mistake.

"Obviously, nobody's going to pay that kind of money," he said, laughing. "But I have to send it out."

Under the Freedom of Information Act, he said, the VA would not charge the newspaper for processing the first 100 pages.

After that, the fee is 15 cents per page.

Wright said the file on the computer system contains between 8-million and 10-million pages.

"The person that starts this is going to retire by the time he gets it done," he said.

The Times' stories were followed by federal inquiries into CoreFLS, which the VA had planned to roll out nationwide. VA Secretary Anthony Principi put that plan on hold after kinks in the software caused surgery delays and other problems at Bay Pines.

On March 29, the newspaper filed an FOIA request with the VA, asking for a history of the project, including original specifications, contractor bids and preliminary test results.

Times' attorney Alison Steele said the cost estimate appeared excessive but suggested narrowing the scope of the public records request to speed up the process.

Wright said the VA has never asked a newspaper to pay such a large amount for a public records request. The previous highest estimate was $20,000 two years ago, he said, but the newspaper declined to pay.

[Last modified July 15, 2004, 01:00:38]