A vocal opponent of Montgomery County’s policy on day labor centers has said he may sue the county to compel them to release information he has requested on businesses that hire from the centers. Chuck Floyd, a retired military officer who was the Republican candidate for county executive in the 2006 elections, has since become a vocal opponent of the county government’s support for day labor centers. He and other members of the anti-illegal immigration group “Help Save Maryland” delivered Freedom of Information Act requests on August 1 to County Executive Ike Leggett’s office and the county council. Group members sought to use the federal law to obtain the names and addresses of businesses employing day laborers who may be in the U.S. illegally.
“If I’d been elected, things would not be this way,” said Floyd, who garnered only 23 percent to Leggett’s 67 percent during the election. “I would have been cracking down on illegals, not encouraging them to come here.”
The county provided Floyd with tables in which it outlined roughly $2.3 million in approved 2008 fiscal year funding for CASA of Maryland, the immigrant advocacy group that runs county day labor centers, but said it did not have access to other information Floyd sought. The letters also asked for the names and addresses of businesses employing day laborers from the centers, as well as the names and addresses of center employees.
“We are not obligated to give records we don’t have,” Leggett’s spokesman, Patrick Lacefield, said. “A further question is why are they even asking for it in the first place.”
Help Save Maryland director Brad Botwin said the organization wanted the information to create a database of businesses that use day labor center workers so people opposed to the centers can know which businesses to avoid.
Floyd said he planned to send Leggett a follow-up letter, and that if he did not receive the other information within 14 days he would take legal action against the county.
