FOIA Coordinator by Edward Vielmetti

Alaska: "Death by a Thousand FOIAs", WSJ 2009 column on Sarah Palin

With the release of Sarah Palin's electronic mail from her tenure as governor of Alaska nearing, it's worth rereading this 2009 piece by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal on "Why Palin Quit". Emphasis added, which frames intense interest in the workings of public office as abusive political targeting:

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature. Most have centered on Ms. Palin's use of government resources, and to date have turned up little save for a few state trips that she agreed to reimburse the state for because her children had accompanied her. In the process, though, she accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the bill would grow ever larger in the future.

Note that the "bureaucratic quagmire" is not triggered by the actions of an individual requester who is doing anything out of the ordinary in requesting public records, but rather from a mass action in which numerous individuals and organizations all ask for something slightly different but perfectly reasonable at about the same time. Bureaucratic budgets that work at the speed of government are ill-equipped in general to respond to a sudden burst of need, especially when that need is internally focused.

Washington Post editorial: University of Virginia should make "full use" of FOIA exemptions

The University of Virginia should make "full use" of all of the FOIA exemptions available to it when responding to a request for the electronic mail from a scientific researcher, says a Washington Post editorial entitled Harassing climate-change researchers.

The question stems from a request for the electronic mail records of climate change researchers from an organization which is professionally opposed to the notion that climate change is real.

Some reference from the various sides in this dispute:

Climate Change and FOIA at the University of Virginia: U. Va.'s official statements on the subject.

In defense of academic freedom against denialist FOIA inquisition tactics: from Climate Science Watch.

The FOIA exemption from Virginia:

§ 2.2-3705.4. Exclusions to application of chapter; educational records and certain records of educational institutions.

4. Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher education, other than the institutions' financial or administrative records, in the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issues, whether sponsored by the institution alone or in conjunction with a governmental body or a private concern, where such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.

In Virginia, at least, unpublished academic study and research is exempt from mandatory FOIA disclosure. 

Illinois: bill would restrict rights of frequent FOIA requesters, recoup extraordinary costs that are not generally anticipated under FOIA.

The bill in question is HB1716, SA1. The information I have is from BGA Think Tank, the weblog of the Better Government Association in Illinois.

From Open and Transparent Gov’t is Under Attack — Tell Your Lawmakers to Vote NO on HB1716:

If this legislation passes, a citizen who makes more than 50 FOIA requests in one year, 15 in thirty days, or 7 in seven days, can be labeled a recurrent requester, and would have no designated timeline for receiving their requester documents.

The bill is supported by the Illinois Municipal League, under the rubric that it would allow governments to "recoup extraordinary costs that are not generally anticipated under FOIA."

Who is the person who files frequent FOIA requests? Are they the busybody who is creating a lot of work for overworked municipal staff, or are they the diligent citizen who has found no other way for a public body to maintain its openness than by going through a formal written FOIA request for every document? It's partly a matter of perspective.

Consider the Michigan cases of citizens who filed thousands of FOIA requests. Is that abuse? Jerry McNeely sent in 3000 plus requests in 180 days according to news reports, and eventually a judge found the city of Kalamazoo had done nothing wrong by not responding to them on time.

Thanks to Muck Rock News for the tip to this story.

More coverage and advocacy:

Citizen Advocacy Center is against the bill, calling the problem "undocumented". (Facebook)

Daily Herald, "Senate committee approves FOIA restrictions". 

Sen. Matt Murphy, a Palatine Republican, was the only committee member to oppose the measure. He said he could support it if there was an exact amount of time set for local governments to respond to recurrent requesters, but “reasonable” is too vague and allows for loopholes.