FOIA Coordinator by Edward Vielmetti

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.

Northwest Herald: Overzealous redaction from the Upper Illinois River Valley Development Authority

Thanks to the Northwest Herald of McHenry County, Illinois for this shining example of an overly zealous redaction effort, where almost every word is blacked out with what looks like magic marker. It's also notable as an example of bad redaction, in that the magic marker was inexpertly wielded in spots leaving letter ascenders and descenders unprotected, sometimes enough to discern the words below the ink with the naked eye.

The story is FOIA response regarding Lakewood sportsplex filled with redactions, written by Kevin P. Cramer and published December 29, 2010.

SportsPlex FOIA response

Northwest Herald seeks former McHenry County College president Walt Packard's performance evaluations in face of FOIA denials

The Northwest Herald (Illinois) pursues a story on the performance evaluations of former McHenry County College president Walt Packard, which the college refuses to disclose. 

McHenry County College this week again refused a Northwest Herald Freedom of Information Act request to release the contents of its former president’s evaluations. The college repeatedly has cited the personal privacy exemption in FOIA in denying us the information.

Personal privacy exemptions vary from state to state in the small matters of detail that are relevant. Here is detail from the Illinois Attorney General FOIA FAQ:

Personal information that, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, unless the disclosure is consented to in writing by the person who is the subject of the information.  Under FOIA, the “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” means the “disclosure of information that is highly personal or objectionable to a reasonable person and in which the subject’s right to privacy outweighs any legitimate public interest in obtaining the information.” Disclosing information that relates to the public duties of public employees is not considered an invasion of personal privacy. 

The Herald gets kudos from a reader for its continuing efforts:

I’d like to encourage the Northwest Herald to continue to use FOIA, and continue to remind us all of this very valuable tool. I suggest that citizens learn to use it as well. By its frequent use, it will continue to help us understand our government better.

 

 

State of Illinois withholds published newspaper articles from FOIA request by the newspaper that printed them

As part of our ongoing reporting on the issue, we filed a FOIA request with the state to determine what exactly it had forwarded on to the CDC. The state complied with much of our request, but withheld some information, including the following: “Appendix C was withheld because it lists the names of persons involved in the lawsuit. While this information has been publicized by your newspaper, our legal staff indicates that we are still obligated to withhold the names ...” The state didn’t just withhold the names, it withheld the entire Appendix C item, whatever that was. Well, in reporting this week on the CDC’s predictable conclusion that it could find no evidence of a cluster, we finally learned what Appendix C was – our own newspaper stories.

from The Northwest Herald column by editor Dan McCaleb.

Illinois: Brookfield Zoo argues it is not subject to FOIA; provides fee-for-service zoo to Cook County Forest Preserve District

Pulled from Suburban Life, a Chicago area newspaper

Brookfield Zoo officials denied Suburban Life’s Freedom of Information Act request for the release of Affie the elephant’s necropsy report in a letter Oct. 29.

the argument from the zoo:

The Chicago Zoological Society, [Ken] Kaduk wrote, is a “private sector, not-for-profit corporation,” and the FOIA applies only to public and government organizations.

“The Chicago Zoological Society manages Brookfield Zoo for the Cook County Forest Preserve District on a fee-for-service basis,” Kaduk wrote.

This sounds like a classic case of asking the wrong people for the information. 

The Forest Preserve District of Cook County is a public agency, and is thus subject to the Illinois FOIA laws.  They may or may not have the necropsy report, but they do have a board of directors and a zoological committee, and if I were doing the asking I'd call the zoo committee director directly and see what they knew; and, if they didn't want to say, I'd start by asking for a bunch of email between the various parties involved to see what was said around those times.