Mayor Rob Ford’s office has been slow in turning over email and telephone records, so slow that despite three months of relentless pestering by city freedom of information staff the first records have just been handed over for processing.

“Nothing in June or July, nothing received until yesterday,” city spokeswoman Deb Brown said Friday.

The delay in complying with freedom of information requests means that it will be weeks or months more before any of the records are made public.

The Star is seeking records from key staffers in Ford’s office to shed light on the controversy surrounding the mayor who was seen by two Star reporters and the editor of the Gawker website smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and making racial and homophobic slurs.

Ford’s office was asked in early June by the Star and other media outlets to release email and other records maintained by Ford staffers who either resigned or were fired during the crack cocaine video scandal.

City freedom of information staff “have just started to go through them,” Brown told the Star. “The records are coming and coming really slow.”

The Star has found this is a pattern, not just with these records but with most records requested this spring and summer from Ford’s office. On three of the Star’s relatively benign requests — about a public works project, a neighbourhood dispute, and a city hall event early in his mayoral term — his staff have not only missed the legislated 30-day response deadline but had very little communication with the city freedom of information office that is responsible for gathering public records.

Two of the requests are more than 40 days overdue. One is more than 30 days overdue.

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests by the Star for an interview on this matter.

Provincial freedom of information legislation requires public bodies like the mayor’s office to make public most information created by officials in the course of regular business. Requests are to be responded to in a timely fashion with an expectation of records being released either within 30 days or, in some cases, longer if a time extension is granted.

The Star’s first story on the crack cocaine video was published late in the day Thursday, May 16. It started a cascade reaction that soon saw resignations of top staffers in the mayor’s office and the firing by Ford of his chief of staff, Mark Towhey.

One of the Star’s requests, filed June 4, asked for email and telephone records of Towhey and the staffers who resigned: public relations officials George Christopolous and Isaac Ransom, and staffers Brian Johnston and Kia Nejatian. The Star asked for their records between March 15 and June 1.

The Star also requested logistics director David Price’s emails dating back to April 2013. The Star has not received those records.

Twenty-eight similar requests were received from other media outlets around the same time, city clerk Uli Watkiss has told the Star.

One Star story published as part of the paper’s ongoing investigation into the Ford matter revealed that some city staff had concerns that mayor’s office records related to the fired or resigned staffers would be destroyed, an allegation city staff denied.

Here’s how requests to public bodies are supposed to work, according to provincial rules and specific City of Toronto guidelines. The target of the request — in this case the mayor’s office — is supposed to hand over records to the city’s freedom of information office within 16 days. The freedom of information office then has 14 days to process the records for release (ensuring, for example, that no personal information would be made public).

Due to the volume of requests by the media, the city’s freedom of information office initially asked for a two-month time extension to Sept. 3. However, that was for the release of records to the public, not for the mayor’s office to send them for processing.

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A timeline of the media requests released to the Star Friday reveals that the city’s freedom of information office has been relentless in calling and writing the mayor’s office requesting that it comply with legislated timelines. At one point, the freedom of information office sent over staff to explain to the mayor’s replacement employees how to comply with requests.

That meeting, on June 21, came after a series of attempts by city freedom of information staff to urge co-operation from the mayor’s office. City records show freedom of information staff prodded the mayor’s office on June 6, June 10, June 17 and June 20.

Freedom of information staff continued to urge co-operation weekly or twice weekly throughout July and August. A meeting with the mayor’s office was held last Wednesday.

On Thursday, almost three months after the request was made, the first “package” of hundreds of pages of records was shipped over by the mayor’s office, said Brown, adding more are expected next week.

This means that the freedom of information office must now begin processing the records. Brown said she has no idea how long that will take.

The slow response of Ford’s office is especially unusual because city offices generally provide requested records to the freedom of information office well before the deadline.

The response from Ford’s office to these requests appears to have worsened significantly in the last year, but it has prompted questions before. In 2011, his office took a 20-day extension in response to media requests for a copy of his daily itinerary, then missed the new deadline. The extension itself was described as “puzzling” by Brian Beamish, an assistant commissioner with the province’s information and privacy office.

Ford has previously dismissed allegations related to the video saying, “I cannot comment on a video I have not seen or does not exist.”

While Ford and his staff did not respond to the Star’s interview request relating to his tardy freedom of information response, a Ford staffer did speak with the Toronto Sun recently after the Star signalled to the mayor’s office that it was preparing a story on the delayed response.

On Friday, a Sun reporter photographed mayor’s staff sorting through a mound of email printouts. The Sun was granted an interview with Ford staffer Sunny Petrujkic, who said the mayor is “committed to transparency and accountability.”