[il-talk] BEPB FOIA Request

[Edward Birmingham]

Bruce    I'm not sure what has happened in your training experience that would cause you to go down this path.  If you are having a negative training experience, I would strongly suggest that you contact either your mentor or the Training Committee Chair.
If there is something that I could do, please don't hesitate to either email or call me off list serve.
I'm sure whatever issues you are having can be quickly resolved once we identify what they are.

-----Original Message-----
From: il-talk [mailto:il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bruce C. Paul via il-talk
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2015 7:35 PM
To: NFB of Illinois Mailing List
Cc: Bruce C. Paul
Subject: [il-talk] BEPB FOIA Request

Hi All,
As some of you may know, I would like to do a FOIA request to get more exact numbers on how much the blind venders in Illinois' BEPB earn.  Since a FOIA should be as narrow as possible, I thought I would ask the community what type of information they would like.
I intend to ask for yearly setaside by vendor, percentage of profit paid to setaside by vendor, these numbers in aggregate form, numbers of vendors who participate in Illinois' Program, number of "vendors" without facilities, average age of vendors in the program, and locations of facilities.  Other information that might be of interest include:  number of new locations that have been openned in the last 5 years, number of facilities that have come up for bid in the last 5 years, the actual bid letters for these facilities, aggregate information from the bid letters from the last 5 years. 

I would do this request on my own imputuse and will probably have to cover any costs associated with the request.  My motivation for this action is the lack of reliable information, or at least information I consider reliable, about the earnings of vendors in the program.  I have a second question I would like answered, does aggregation help or hurt the population of vendors in Illinois?  Everyone at Icree seems to have an opinion on this idea and many of the people I know in the Federation have definite opinions on the BEPB in Illinois.  I don't really.  I don't have enough information.  I am in this year's class for vending, but I haven't learned anything that makes clear what the answers to these questions are.  Further, my interaction with many in the program has lead me to believe that many would prefer to point fingers rather than debate the facts or try to improve the situation of their fellow human being.  I'm not a political person.  I will also contact an open government group I know to see if there's information they would like.
I'd feel happy to hear your ideas, or questions, or suggestions.  

Your fello federationist,Bruce C. Paul

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