FOIA Coordinator by Edward Vielmetti

Specify a maximum amount you are willing to pay

Every single FOIA request should have language in it that specifies a maximum that you are willing to pay, and that maximum should be a reasonable estimate on your part of how much you expect to pay.

For routine requests, like meeting minutes, policy documents, meeting agendas, and other records which should not require redaction, you should specify that you do not expect there to be any cost to the request.

Some suggested language reads

I am willing to pay up to $10.00 to satisfy this request. If the costs for fulfilling the request are expected to exceed $10.00, please provide an itemized summary of expected costs before proceeding with the request. Please consider waiving these fees, as the results of this query will contribute to the public interest.

If you expect the request to have no costs, write this as follows:

Because these documents have already been prepared and distributed to the public, I expect that there will be no cost in providing me with an existing electronic copy. If there are any costs for fulfilling this request, please itemize them before proceeding with this request.

Do everything you can to prevent the public body from accidentally doing a lot of work that you have no intention of paying for; a cap on fees will avoid needless work and frustration.

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The high cost of redaction: 414 hours of Michigan State Police video for almost $20,000

Americans for Prosperity is looking for access to 414 hours of camera footage from protests at the Michigan state capitol regarding right to work. The Michigan State Police responded with an estimated cost to provide this: $19,600, or $47.29 per hour for a technician to review the entire set of footage looking for materials that could be redacted under one or more of the Michigan FOIA exemptions for police procedures.

The story is from the Lansing State Journal, "Police want $19,600 for right-to-work protest videos". AFP wants a fee waiver. The quote from the story:

“Prior to releasing this footage, all 414 hours would need to be reviewed — and then potentially redacted — to ensure we are not releasing any prohibited information, such as a police officer conducting a (criminal background) check or tactical/operational details that would compromise officer safety,” (MSP spokeswoman Shanon) Banner said.

Redaction is always expensive, and hundreds of hours of surveillance camera footage would be incredibly tedious to review. I'll be looking for other examples of redaction of video to compare these costs with what other agencies have charged.

Virginia extends FOIA exemption to legislative aides, in contrast to Michigan proposed law

As spotted on Watchdog.Org - Virginia Bureau:

With the passage Friday of Delegate Tag Greason’s HB 1639, the Virginia House of Delegates added words to a debated portion of FOIA law, clarifying that legislative aides are simply an extension of their legislators when working for them, and thus have the same privacy protections for “working papers” and correspondence.

A comparison to Michigan, for reference:

In Michigan, the language current exempts legislators themselves, covering only

(ii) An agency, board, commission, or council in the legislative branch of the state government.

The proposed Michigan legislation HB 4302 of 2013 would extend FOIA to the legislature. The legislature is currently exempt based on 1985-86 Opinion of Attorney Genernal, No. 6390 (1986) (as cited by the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press).

The Sunshine Review's page on Legislatures and Transparency is a good guide to the ins and outs of various state government inclusion or exclusion of legislators from FOIA requests.

HB 4302 of 2013 would subject the Michigan legislature to FOIA requests

As seen on Open States; don't know much more yet, but will update.

From the office of Jeff Irwin, as of 22 February 2013:

Thank you for contacting Rep. Irwin regarding HB 4302.  Essentially, this bill would subject the legislature to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  It has been referred to the Committee on Government Operations where it awaits action.

I would guess, based on the fact that all of the sponsors that I recognized were Democrats, that this will have little chance of passing a Republican-controlled House. But I could be wrong.

Related articles

How to search the Michigan legislature for pending legislation

The No-Nonsense Guide to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act

City of Ann Arbor turns down request for meeting minutes, again

Whole Lotta Redactin' Going On

Bipartisan Letter Asks Obama to Explain Open-Government Failures

Michigan House HB 4011 of 2013 would exempt 911 calls from disclosure.

Full legislative text here: 

The relevant bits, as of Friday, January 25, 2013. Please note that this is subject to change up until the last minute. The bill was sponsored by Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth.

I'm not shouting, that's just the text as presented.

     (Z) EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED IN THIS SUBDIVISION, AND
 
UNLESS THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN DISCLOSURE UNDER THIS ACT OUTWEIGHS
 
THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN NONDISCLOSURE IN A PARTICULAR INSTANCE,
 
AUDIO RECORDINGS OF EMERGENCY TELEPHONE CALLS MADE TO A 9-1-1
 
SYSTEM UNDER THE EMERGENCY 9-1-1 SERVICE ENABLING ACT, 1986 PA 32,
 
MCL 484.1101 TO 484.1717. THIS SUBDIVISION DOES NOT APPLY TO
 
WRITTEN RECORDS, TRANSCRIPTS, OR OTHER WRITTEN REPORTS RELATING TO
 
THE EMERGENCY TELEPHONE CALL. THIS SUBDIVISION DOES NOT APPLY TO
 
AUDIO RECORDINGS UNDER 1 OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING CIRCUMSTANCES:

 
     (i) THE CALLER WHOSE VOICE IS ON THE AUDIO RECORDING, OR, IF
 
THE CALLER IS DECEASED OR INCAPACITATED, THE LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE
 
OF THE CALLER, REQUESTS A COPY OF THE AUDIO RECORDING. A REQUEST
 
UNDER THIS SUBPARAGRAPH SHALL BE ACCOMPANIED BY A SIGNED AFFIDAVIT
 
ATTESTING TO ALL OF THE FOLLOWING:
 
     (A) THE AFFIANT IS THE CALLER OR, IF THE CALLER IS DECEASED OR
 
INCAPACITATED, THE LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CALLER.
 
     (B) THE AUDIO RECORDING IS RELEVANT TO AN INVESTIGATION OF A
 
LEGAL MATTER ARISING FROM THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING UP TO THE
 
EMERGENCY TELEPHONE CALL.
 
     (ii) THE REQUEST FOR DISCLOSURE IS FROM A LAW ENFORCEMENT
 
AGENCY CONDUCTING AN INVESTIGATION RELATED TO THE EMERGENCY
 
TELEPHONE CALL.
 
     (iii) A COURT ORDERS THE RELEASE OF THE AUDIO RECORDING.

 A comment from Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, my state rep, reached via email:

The availability of 911 calls, dash cams and interrogations is very important and we already have means for the information to be held in secrecy if there are good reasons. The current foia exceptions shouldn't be expanded, they should be curtailed.

 

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Michigan Senate SB 49 of 2013 would protect gun owner information from FOIA requests

Prompted by reaction to a New York paper printing an interactive map that showed detailed locations of owners of registered guns, some Michigan legislators are proposing legislation that would exempt gun records from disclosure under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.

The bill is SB 49 of 2013, and full text is available.

On the house side, HB 4001 of 2013 would increase penalties for non-compliance with FOIA laws and would cap copying charges at $0.10 per page.

Also on the house side, HB 4011 of 2013 would exempt 911 calls from disclosure.  

Did Maryland Regents violate the Maryland Open Meetings Act in joining the Big Ten?

From the Washington Post, Legality of U-Md. regents’ Big Ten vote questioned

As the University of Maryland’s top officials finalized a surprising move to the Big Ten Conference this week, the school’s public governing board went into “emergency” mode and met twice in secret to decide whether it would endorse the change.

Those meetings — unannounced and entirely out of public view — appear to have been in violation of the Maryland Open Meetings Act, according to legal experts. The act lays out rules for gatherings of public entities such as the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents, which the governor appoints to oversee most of the state’s public colleges and universities.

More details on the Maryland Open Meetings Act from the Maryland Attorney General.

More at the Student Press Law Center, "University of Maryland regents approved move to Big Ten in closed session".

Much more from the Washington Post, "Details emerge about University System of Maryland regents’ private meetings". Thanks to Rob Hilton for noting this detailed report, which continues on into the comments.

Related articles

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The high cost of police records in Abington, Massachusetts

From the New England First Amendment Center:

On the surface, it seemed like a simple request. The Enterprise (Brockton, Mass.) reporter Erin Shannon sent public information requests to seven community police departments asking for data on the number of motor vehicle stops by town police for 2010 and 2011. She also asked for the results of those stops: arrests, criminal complaints, civil complaints, warrants or verbal warnings and for the total collected in fines for that period, including what amount of those fines the town got to keep....

Most agencies responded quickly with no or minimal costs, but not Abington, Mass:

Chief Majenski is not one to be overly forthcoming with information about anything. It’s been an ongoing issue for several years – one we have attempted to resolve with meetings, calls and letters.

In this instance, the chief responded in time and in writing. He and his records clerk estimated the cost for providing the data would be $15, 954. You read that number correctly – a few bucks shy of $16,000.

In a case like this, you have to ask: is there a simpler request that would return most of the information at a lower cost, or is the Chief simply being intractable and quoting an absurdly high figure to avoid public review of the department's actions? Find out by reading the full story, Abington traffic stop data still under wraps.

 

 

South Carolina Supreme Court hears FOIA case on public funding of private bodies

From the Herald Online: 

“What we have here is an unprecedented case,” attorney Kevin Hall told the justices. Hall, a Columbia lawyer, is representing Rocky Disabato, a Charleston man who sued the S.C. Association of School Administrators seeking access to its internal records, including telephone records.

The association gets broad support from taxpayer dollars because many of its members – school administrators – pay their dues with money from their school districts’ coffers, Hall said.

For that and other reasons, the S.C. Supreme Court should declare the group a public body subject to the Freedom of Information Act’s records’ disclosure provisions, Hall said.

John Reagle, the attorney representing the association, acknowledged that technically, the group is a public body. But he said it is a nonprofit corporation set up to be an advocacy group for public education issues in South Carolina. He urged the court to find that the FOIA can’t be applied to any private, issue-oriented advocacy organization.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/04/4312428/sc-justices-hear-clash-over-what.html#storylink=cpy

 

Westland, Michigan places minimum $5 fee on FOIA requests

From the Observer and Eccentric:

A $5 initiation fee is collected with the written FOIA and a 50-percent deposit is required for the cost of copying records.

“They must request an existing public document. Legally, we can't create a document (to fulfill a request),” Schoof said. “The person making a request must know what they are looking for.”

The Westland city clerk's web site spells out a summary of the policy:

Freedom of Information requests are filed with the City Clerk’s office. They are to be used if you are inquiring about any existing public documents from any Department of the City. The Freedom of Information Act states the public entity is not required to make a compilation, summary, or report of information. Also, the City may charge a reasonable fee for the research and copying of documents covered in the request. The research fee is based on the hourly wage plus the cost of fringe benefits for that hour of the lowest paid Clerical employee in the City. This fee is $45.61 per hour and is charged in fifteen minute increments. Also, the cost of copying is $1.00 per page. A $5.00 minimum fee is required.

The relevant parts of Michigan laws on FOIA fees are at MCL 15.234. The plain text of the law includes no mention of allowable minimum fees.

Some comparable Michigan FOIA fee schedules:

• Eastern Michigan University: Fees waived if the cost is less than $10.00.
• University of Michigan: $0.05 per page for copying; research fees waived if there is less than two hours of work.
• Western Michigan University: $0.05 per page for copying; research fees waived if there is less than two hours of work.
• Livonia Police Department: Minimum $5.00 fee for records searches.
• City of Ann Arbor: $0.05 per page; research fees waived if there is less than one hour of work.
• City of Detroit: No fee schedule provided.
• City of Grand Rapids: No fee schedule provided.
• City of Lansing: No fee schedule provided.
• City of Marquette: $0.25 per page; research fees waived if there is less than one half hour of work.
• City of Traverse City: $0.25 per page for the first 5 pages, thereafter $0.10 per page.

 

Searching for meeting minutes: Ann Arbor Building Board of Appeals 2010-2012

City of Ann Arbor: The Building Board of Appeals hears appeals of cases where the city has found poor repairs or construction of buildings; they haven't published their meeting minutes since 2010. A FOIA request has been filed by the editor to see what decisions have been made and what's been on the agendas. 

FOIA request reveals University of Michigan contract with Coursera for free online classes

The Chronicle of Higher Education used a FOIA request to the University of Michigan to get a copy of their contract with Coursera, a startup that's providing free online classes. Their story here:

Coursera has been operating for only a few months, but the company has already persuaded some of the world's best-known universities to offer free courses through its online platform. Colleges that usually move at a glacial pace are rushing into deals with the upstart company. But what exactly have they signed up for? And if the courses are free, how will the company—and the universities involved—make money to sustain them?

Some clues can be found in the contract the institutions signed. The Chronicle obtained the agreement between Coursera and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the first public university to make such a deal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, and Coursera officials say that the arrangement is similar to those with the other partners.

The contract reveals that even Coursera isn't yet sure how it will bring in revenue. A section at the end of the agreement, titled "Possible Company Monetization Strategies," lists eight potential business models, including having companies sponsor courses. That means students taking a free course from Stanford University may eventually be barraged by banner ads or promotional messages. But the universities have the opportunity to veto any revenue-generating idea on a course-by-course basis, so very little is set in stone.

Read through to the end of Inside the Coursera Contract: How an Upstart Company Might Profit From Free Courses from the College 2.0 section of the July 19, 2012 Chronicle of Higher Education.

On a departmental mailing list, a professor writes:

While I am sure that someone at this university is unhappy about the FOIA, it makes me pretty proud that we are pushing so hard that *we* are the ones to be the target of the FOIA. When you are the "leaders and the best" folks tend to chase you around.

Water over the dam - restricted information about Michigan dam operations

Two articles from my old FOIA Friday column are relevant to this week's low water conditions on the Huron River in Ann Arbor. Regulating water over the dam covers the FERC eLibrary, a very easy way to get documents regarding dam operations - easy, that is, unless the documents are labeled "Critical Energy Infrastructure Information". CEII documents are protected under a national security "need to know" blanket restriction and are exempt from FOIA. The second, Rejected for security reasons, notes that these same documents are also exempt from FOIA on the state level. This graphic depicting the inside design of the Barton Dam, which was printed in 1917 and is in the public domain, would be exempt from disclosure under Michigan state law.

"FOIA must apply to new bridge" - Lansing State Journal editorial

From the Lansing State Journal, "FOIA must apply to bridge oversight /Snyder should address NITC transparency", June 21, 2012

There will be one, paid for by Canada and Federal Highway tax dollars. Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration is saying that Michigan is not obligated to pay any of the New International Trade Crossing (NITC) costs and that no state appropriation is required. But there will be years of continuing costs and assorted ongoing bridge and travel issues. Canada and Michigan will create an International Authority to oversee the letting of bids to design, develop, finance, construct and operate the NITC.

What is unclear and what must be addressed is the transparency and accountability of the governing bodies that will build and manage the bridge and crossings. The commitment to open government required by Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act must be applied to the construction and management of NITC. It is not at all clear that this will happen.

The op/ed compares the new bridge to the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, which as an international body is not subject to New York state FOIA laws. That authority, which operates the Peace Bridge, has had unpeaceful relations with neighborhoods at the approaches to the bridge. See for instance Bruce Jackson's Peace Bridge Chronicles which relates the struggle over expansion of that bridge and how New York state environmental laws were brought to bear on regulating an authority otherwise unwilling to answer to a higher power.

ProPublica: TSA takes 4 years to respond to FOIA request

One for the "delays" category, this ProPublica report from Michael Grabell on waiting four years for a request from the Transportation Security Administration on reports on passenger complaints:

When I made a similar FOIA request in 2008, I assumed the TSA would respond in a few months. Government agencies have about a month to respond to public record requests, though they often take longer. I figured even if their response took months, I'd be able to repeat it regularly to get a timely, inside look as to what passengers were complaining about and find out about incidents that required some more digging.

Boy, was I wrong.

Slow responses to requests to federal agencies is the norm; if ProPublica had wanted to speed up this process, they could have gone to court.

As Joshua Schachter once wrote about something that wasn't going very fast:

I guess that's better than having a FOIA request in an inner loop, though.

 

FOIA is not a channel for your anger

Parents in the Ann Arbor Public Schools were told by the superintendant that if they wanted detailed answers to the questions they had about school policy and budget changes that they should file FOIA requests. This did not go over well, and now some parents are angry not just at the changes proposed but also that they have to go through a layer of bureaucracy to get more information in time to have informed responses for budget deadlines.

FOIA is not a good channel for your anger. If you are presented with a request or a requirement to fill out a form to get the information you want, it's better to be careful and edit out your irritation from the actual request. Be straightforward in asking for the records that you know to exist, and take that first paragraph where you are upset that you have to go through the process and delete it before it's sent.

More: Audience demands answers from Ann Arbor school administration (AnnArbor.com) ; AAPS Budget and FOIA: Transparency, where art thou? (Ann Arbor Schools Musings)

Feces and FOIA

Dog feces, that is.

From "South Poop", a Chicago South Loop blog:

Courtesy of Dana Weems, a writer for ChicagoTalks.org, South Poop has received a copy of a City of Chicago FOIA request that lists the citations for the last three years under the City’s Removal of Excrement ordinance 7-12-420.

From AnnArbor.com, on a story regarding dog excrement at Slauson Middle School:

Who is actually responsible for the poop being left in the field? Are the offenses occurring during the hour a week unleashed dogs roam free or in the 167 hours in which they don’t?

I don’t know. Feces are not subject to FOIA. But the fact of the matter is, when “it” happens,unlike Forrest Gump, people are going to take steps to avoid it.

At least in Chicago, feces are subject to FOIA.

 

FOIA as a follow up tool

News organizations write many incomplete stories. There's not enough time to talk to the cops after a minor accident, or the main actor in a story is unavailable for comment, or thousands of tiny delays contribute towards the development of an incomplete image in writing.

One of the sad beauties of the typical FOIA process is that it takes a long time to get an answer even for some simple questions. Turn this into your advantage, if you are writing news; the FOIA request provides the time to produce the follow-up story that fills out the quickly written and incomplete image.

Always appeal your FOIA rejections

From AnnArbor.com, December 2, 2011 -

Ann Arbor officials have denied AnnArbor.com's request for a draft copy of a new report on fire department staffing levels.

Getting your FOIA request rejected is the first step, not the last step, in the process of determining what is going on. Always appeal your rejections - there is always a reasonable second opinion to be had, and in Michigan it comes free of charge and without the need for a lawsuit. For every rejection, there is a counter-argument, and if you are in a competent news organization there is always some angle to the story that can be followed up with an appeal out of the clerical bureaucracy and into the leadership level.

From the Ann Arbor Chronicle, December 21, 2011: Column: FOIA Hazards, Christmas Gifts Yelling FOIA in a democratic theater generates backdraft, by Dave Askins.

During the extension, I approached (city administrator Steve) Powers, essentially outside the formal mechanism of the FOIA process. My pitch to Powers was not a legal argument. My pitch was based on the organizational interests of the city and the public interest of the community. We met on Friday, Dec. 16.

In that meeting, Powers assured me the draft report, the final report (which is still watermarked “draft”) and the maps would be released the following week. And the records were, in fact, released. We withdrew our FOIA request when we got the information we requested.

Indeed, the fire report has been released. It recommends a bunch of changes to the way the city staffs its fire department, and notably to me at least a recommendation that the city use mini fire trucks equipped with foam-based fire fighting tools to respond rapidly to fires with smaller crews needed to work the equipment. It's a big report, and the city is still digesting it - it's also a report that cost more than $30,000, and that the city paid for in July but didn't release until the end of the year.

Government relationship management and the FOIA process

Some brief thoughts, on the subject of this week's FOIAchat which is discussing the journalism (and J school) phenomenon of the "mass FOIA" or "FOIA audit", where a single request is broadcast to a myriad of organizations in the attempt to get a widespread response or to assess compliance.

The observation is that successful FOIA efforts are about building relationships with FOIA officers and clerks, and that a confrontative mass mailing campaign is not the way to necessarily build goodwill. The courteous approach would first attempt to establish personal communications outside of the FOIA process with each point of contact, and only then send the written correspondence.

Is being nice necessary? Of course not. But it may speed the process tremendously and get you out of the realm of confrontation - even if the requests are inherently contentous. You and the clerk both have incentives to play well together, especially if your requests are repeated, and the less friction in the relationship the faster everything happens.

Rhode Island: two versions of a redacted police report

In "Public records outrage of the day: North Providence edition", WPRI (Providence, Rhode Island, Channel 12) shows two copies of a police report: one with everything redacted, and the second provided after a verbal appeal (which amounted to asking "Is this a joke?"). Here's the first one, in which nearly the entirety of a police report has been blacked out.

There are plenty of reasons to appeal a rejected FOIA request, and overly zealous redaction is high on the list. If the document has been obliterated by redactions, you should always appeal. The Sharpie wielded by the first person to do a hasty job on marking out information might well be different from the careful editing done by the next person down the line. You can strenghten your argument by asking the agency to be specific about which exemptions from disclosure it is using, and asking that exempt material be separated from non-exempt materials.

Petoskey News-Review seeks email sent during Charlevoix County public meeting

UPDATE: A lawsuit has been filed in this case.

The story is told in the Petoskey News-Review, in this July 25 article:

The News-Review seeks to compel Charlevoix County Prosecutor John Jarema to release emails between himself and Chris Christensen, county commissioner, requested by the newspaper after the board’s purchase of Apple iPads on May 11. The newspaper requested the emails to determine whether another commissioner’s hunch is on the mark.

In a curious turn, the county prosecutor is said to threaten the newspaper if it writes about the issue:

“Mr. McBain you are hereby placed on notice that anymore spoken or written word of me violating the OMA when it is an impossibility in these types of situations will result in civil action for libel and slander. Mr. McBain has now put it in writing in his denial that I am violating the OMA and he is hereby on notice. All an attorney has is his reputation and ethics and for McBain to be ignorant of the law and allege such false and malicious allegations will not be tolerated,” Jarema wrote in an undated letter to the News-Review’s attorneys.

Previously in the Petoskey News, a newspaper not unaccustomed to taking on public officials for their openness:  FOIA requests are not scarlet letters (2009); Local police often require more formalities to see records (2009; on access to police logs). 

Appeal your FOIA response, even if it was granted

The last two FOIA requests which I sent in were granted. Nevertheless, I appealed both of them, and one of those appeals just came back with additional documents relevant to the request.

If you write a FOIA request carefully, with the goal of asking for at least one document which you know exists and is readily available, you get past the agency's initial reflex to say "no". A well-formed request will have already identified something which has been previously referenced in public so that you can know that someone has something and you're not just fishing around.

The particular request that I made was for a series of reports provided by a contractor to the city for a service that's not performing up to expectations. I knew that there was one report which had been discussed at a council meeting, so I asked for all reports from last year and this year from that contractor. The initial response was prompt and included just that last report.

I didn't just want to know the latest report, though; what I was after was a chronicle of the entire correspondence. In my appeal, I asked specifically for all relevant reports and not just the most recent one. The answer came back a few days later, showing how the contractor had prepared reporting which consistently put their performance in the best possible light with no hint that they were consistently underperforming program goals.

If you can identify a single responsive document that has made it into the public light, it should be straightforward to construct a query that generates a quick positive answer to get that document plus a somewhat more difficult to fulfill query for the entire series run of that reporting. Often the last report will have been polished up for public display, and the early run of the series gives the necessary perspective to strip back that polish and expose the unlacquered truth.

FOIA request: municipal ordinances regulating lawn care in Oak Park, MI

A citizen of Oak Park, Michigan is in the news because the plantings in her yard apparently violate a municipal ordinance. News coverage so far has been uninformative regarding the true nature of the ordinances that may or may not have been violated. This is the FOIA request I sent in.

This is a request under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, addressed to the city clerk of Oak Park, Michigan. If you are not the FOIA coordinator for Oak Park, please forward this request as appropriate.

Please provide the following records:

1. Records showing municipal ordinances which regulate the upkeep, maintenance, and care of lawns, yards, and easements in neighborhoods commonly zoned as residential.

I believe that these records are in the possession of the clerk, that they are readily obtainable in digital format, and that the cost ofretrieving these records is nominal. If this request will cost more than one ($1.00) dollar, please inform me before proceeding.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this request.

oakparkhatesveggies is the weblog of Julie Bass, who is involved in the dispute. The City of Oak Park, Michigan web site has contact information, though it does not include a FOIA form or any details about who is FOIA coordinator for the city. 

Oak Park has its municipal ordinance code online, and my search of that returned this section, 18-284, which would appear to be relevant to this request; it regulates grass and noxious weeds. 

Exempted from the provisions of this article, inclusive, are flower gardens, plots of shrubbery, vegetable gardens and small grain plots. An exemption under the terms of this section cannot be claimed unless the land has been cultivated and cared for in a manner appropriate to such exempt categories.

I'm counting on the clerk to find all relevant portions of city code that I might have missed.

UPDATE: the responsive text follows

APPENDIX A  ZONING

ARTICLE XVII.  GENERAL PROVISIONS

Sec. 1716.  Screening and landscaping.

Screening and landscaping in all zoning districts, where required, shall adhere to the following minimum standards.

A.      General provisions. In all zoning districts the following minimum standards apply:

1.      All required landscaping shall be continuously maintained in a healthy, growing condition.
2.      All required landscape areas shall be irrigated with an in-ground water irrigation system to assist in maintaining a healthy condition for all landscape plantings and lawn areas. All site plans shall note installation of required irrigation system.
3.      All required landscape plantings which are diseased or dead must be replaced in conformance with the approved landscape plan.
4.      All required landscape areas which abut vehicular drives, parking or other use areas shall be separated from the vehicular use area with a six-inch minimum curb of concrete or asphalt construction.
5.      All unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass ground cover, shrubbery, or other suitable live plant material.

The FOIA request was responded to promptly.

FOIA log comparative analysis from Federal agencies

The Hill does a comparative study of FOIA logs from Federal agencies. They sent 70 requests for logs to 70 agencies, and waited (and waited) to compile the results.

Some executive agencies sent FOIA logs with the requesters’ names, but without their affiliations. Other logs were handwritten. A few agencies complied with The Hill’s request in days, but most took months.

I'm never surprised with the results of media audits of FOIA where lots of requests get generated in a short amount of time to a lot of agencies. You're bound to find some variation, and since you're sending what is essentially a form letter to some clerk who you don't know, it's likely to go at the bottom of whatever queue forms to do the work. 

Reading's Sarah Palin's email - follow #sarahpalin

If ever there was an argument for using a no email strategy for conducting your political life, this is it.

Several media organizations are live-blogging Sarah Palin's inbox.  I have been reading through The Guardian's coverage of this FOIA request and its 20,000 plus responsive documents, many with considerable redaction. The Los Angeles Times Data Desk is handling their coverage and working on a searchable archive. The MSNBC site's mail archive presents a search box. The New York Times has an email browser.

Follow the tag #sarahpalin on Twitter; there's sure to be something interesting unearthed, and certain to be insights into the process of redaction and unredaction along the way. Also follow @gdnpalin which is chronicling The Guardian's 25 page per minute digitization project which will take most of a day out of some poor soul's life.

 

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.

Japan: Nuclear safety FOIA and Japanese public records laws

The Associated Press's "beat of the week" review called out a reporter, Yuri Kageyama, who used Japan's public records law to identify that regulators had taken nuclear plant operators at their word that their plants were protected from tsunami.

An overview of the public records law in Japan goes into history and background and context, and the official government translation of the public records law into English may provide a useful level of detail.

 

Chicago, Illinois: Mick Dumke's "burdensome" FOIA requests, interview with Gapers Block

Here's a good interview by Gaper's Block of Mick Dumke, an investigative journalist with the Chicago Reader, describing his lawsuit against the City of Chicago for their delays and refusals to provide information from Mayor Daley's calendar.

GB: You file a lot of FOIAs against the city. In general, what's your impression of how they usually handle these requests? Do they overzealously redact documents? Do they respond to things in a timely manner?

MD: It varies widely. In some cases, they are very zealous--one could argue overzealous--in redacting information. I've asked for certain police reports and received three sheets of paper with 80 percent of each page blacked out. It's almost funny to look at.

There are certain FOIA officers who are very helpful and give information quickly; who you can sit and talk with and say, "Okay, you don't have time to do it in the five-day period, that's fine--how much time do you need? What's reasonable? If I'm asking for something that's too burdensome, is there something else I can ask for that would give me the same information?" So there are a number of people in the city who are very reasonable and helpful. But, perhaps not surprisingly, I think the closer you get to the mayor, the harder it is to get good, solid, data about what's going on.

Many state FOIA laws allow exclusions for overly burdensome requests, and it's clearly a matter of judgement at many levels what the distinction is between a reasonable request that's fulfilled promptly and an intolerable one that would so disrupt the organization in fulfilling it that it can be rejected as impractical.

Here's a Michigan case, using similar language - in this case "absurdly overbroad" and "intolerable administrative burden" - to define a class of requests which can be rejected out of hand.

Capitol Information Association v Ann Arbor Police Department, 138 Mich App 655; 360 NW2d 262 (1984)

Plaintiff’s request, seeking “all correspondence” between local police department and “all federal law enforcement/investigative” agencies, was “absurdly overboard” and failed to sufficiently identify specific records as required by FOIA, 3(1).

Note that just because a request has a lot of records associated with it, it does not necessarily make it a burdensome request. Just ask those who are getting 26,000 pages of the electronic mail of Gov. Sarah Pailn as governor of Alaska, a request for which the Anchorage Daily News documents the burden of diligence:

Each of those who requested the documents will be required to pay $725.97 in copying fees. They'll also have to pay hundreds of dollars more for the state to ship them what's expected to be about five boxes of copied emails, the boxes weighing about 55 pounds apiece.

 

Ohio: Lawsuit seeks to declare Ohio Municipal League subject to FOIA laws

The Dayton Daily News reports on a lawsuit seeking the records of the Ohio Municipal League, on the grounds that it is a publicly funded body.

“The rule in Ohio is that if you are the functional equivalent of a public agency, you can be compelled to produce records, even if you are not, per se, public,” said Maurice Thompson, executive director of 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a public interest law firm in Columbus that advocates Constitutional rights and limited government.

Laws differ state by state on this account. Here's a Michigan case, Eric Jackson v Eastern Michigan University, 215 Mich App 240; 544 NW2d 737 (1996).

Eastern Michigan University Foundation is primarily funded by Eastern Michigan University and, therefore, is a public body subject to FOIA.

The Michigan courts ruled differently on the case Breighner v. MHSAA, 662 NW 2d 413 - Mich: Court of Appeals 2003

Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) was not a "public body" under MCLS § 15.232 (d)(iv) because its current form was not created by a state or local authority and receipts from ticket sales for its tournaments did not constitute funding by or through a state or local authority; hence, the MHSAA was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The biggest question that will repeatedly come up in these cases is whether the body in question is an agency, doing the work of another agency under contract, or whether it's simply an association with agencies as members.

The full Ohio law is here: ORC 149.43 Availability of public records for inspection and copying.

The Ohio attorney general writes:

The rights and duties set out in the act apply only to a “public office or person responsible for public records,” which includes governmental subdivisions, private entities that are the “substantial equivalent” of public institutions, and other “persons responsible for public records.” The act does not apply to private corporations or other organizations and is also different from the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which applies only to federal agencies.

I'm not as familiar with the cases in Ohio, but it appears that State ex rel. Oriana House, Inc. v. Montgomery, 110 Ohio St. 3d 456 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2006, and State ex rel. Repository v. Nova Behavioral Health, Inc., 2006 Ohio 6713 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2006, as relevant to the issues at hand.