Torrance Fails to Comply with Public Records Request Seeking McCormick Ambulance Response Times

The ability of the those seeking the recently awarded emergency services contract to meet the required response time of 8 minutes 92% of the time appeared to be a key distinguishing factor in the evaluation process.  City officials claimed the previous transport provider, Gerber Ambulance, was in breach of their contract for their failure to meet the requirement.  In support of McCormick, the eventual winner of the contract, the City staff report noted that McCormick was the only bidder that agreed to meet to the requested response times. McCormick’s ability to meet that commitment, however, has since been the subject of intense debate.

Shortly after McCormick initiated performance allegations surfaced that McCormick had a response time of over 20 minutes on at least one occasion.  Such a slow response, if verified, would certainly lead one to question whether McCormick could live up to its promises.  To determine the truth of the matter, I submitted a public records request with the City on 08 December 2014. That request sought that the City provide records indicating the emergency response times for McCormick ambulance for all 911 emergency calls received between 02 December and 07 December 2014 in which transport was provided through their company.

The California Public Records Act requires that municipalities respond to requests for public records within 10 days. The Act does allow for an extension of up to 14 days in “unusual circumstances” defined as follows:

(1) The need to collect the requested records from field facilities that are separate from the office processing the request.

(2) The need to search for, collect, and appropriately examine voluminous amount of separate and distinct records that are demanded in a single request.

(3) The need for consultation, which shall be conducted with all practicable speed, with another agency having substantial interest in the determination of the request or among two or more components of the agency having substantial subject matter interest therein.

(4) The need to compile data, to write programming language or a computer program, or to construct a computer report to extract data.

Ten days after submitting my request, I received a message from City employee Joe Huld notifying me that they would need additional time to respond and that they would do so on or before 01/01/15 (the 14 additional days afforded by the Act). When pressed for what the “unusual circumstance” was that caused the delay, Mr. Huld stated in an e-mail that they needed “additional time to assure that we have collected all the responsive documents and that they are all public record.”

As of the moment of this writing, I have not heard anything further from the City and it is my understanding they are now in violation of the California Public Records Act for failing to adhere to my request.  I find the City’s lack of transparency on this issue very unnerving.  I believe this is an important public safety matter and the lack of response as well as the cryptic justification for the delay only serve to increase suspicions with regard to this issue.

In contrast, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes (who also happens to utilize McCormick) publicizes the response times on their website.  Rancho Palos Verdes holds McCormick to a 8 minute and 59 second response time versus the 8 minute Torrance requirement.  Yet, even with this more lenient requirement, records reflect that McCormick was only able to comply 85.4%, 87.2%, and 84.9% of the time in three recent months.  This performance is well below the 92% of the time required by Torrance and also well below the percentages that Gerber was able to meet in Torrance.

The City was more than happy to make Gerber’s response times available at the City Clerk’s office for anyone to inspect.  With that in mind, they should follow Rancho Palos Verdes lead and do the same with McCormick’s response times.  I believe that is the only way to live up to the increased transparency so many of the candidates promised in the recent election.