DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – When Rochester Community Schools hit Elizabeth Clair with a $33+ million estimate for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, it wasn’t a clerical error – it was a full-on transparency surcharge.
Clair, a Michigan mom, had dared to ask for access to public records about the district’s diversity training and materials. Apparently, asking to see what your tax dollars fund comes with a price tag larger than the GDP of a small nation.
Breaking down the bill: gold-plated paper and diamond-cut staples?
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The Daily Mail reports that the district claimed the astronomical fee was justified by the estimated time and resources needed to fulfill Clair’s request. According to them, this included reviewing potentially sensitive materials and involved going through 21,514,288 emails.
Critics argue that such exorbitant costs are just a convenient way for governments to discourage public scrutiny. After all, who’s ready to fork over tens of millions for some PDFs?
Accountability? It’s on backorder.
This isn’t the first time Rochester Community Schools has faced criticism for dodging transparency. Clair alleges the district routinely drags its feet on FOIA requests, leaving parents in the dark about what’s happening in classrooms.
This includes mom Jessica Opfer who was also stunned when the district informed her she would need to pay a staggering $25,071,307.16 to fulfill her FOIA request for records explaining the removal of a language arts curriculum.
And this all comes on the heels of the Rochester Community School District paying nearly $190,000 to parent Elena Dinverno in a settlement after she alleged they maintained a “dossier” on her following her criticism of the district’s virtual learning policies. According to The Center Square, Dinverno’s lawsuit claimed district officials contacted her employer in 2020 to report her activities, resulting in her termination.
It was after this that Clair did her FOIA, asking to see six months’ worth of emails that had the word “anti-retaliation” in them.
FOIA shenanigans.
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Experienced reporters familiar with government FOIA processes often encounter localities employing all kinds of different tactics to “hide” information and make their information as inaccessible as possible. These include printing documents instead of providing digital copies, converting pages into non-searchable PDFs through scanning, citing inaccurate reasons to deny requests, and mailing duplicate copies of duplicate copies of duplicate copies to FOIA seekers.
FOIA fees turn public records into a pricey privilege.
The Rochester Schools case – and other FOIA shenanigans from the government – raises serious questions about the weaponization of FOIA fees as well as other strategies employed to avoid scrutiny. At the end of the day, public records shouldn’t be difficult to get and aren’t supposed to cost more than an NFL franchise. But at least we now know what transparency is worth in Rochester – roughly $33 million.
