ROCHESTER, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Rochester Community Schools made national news this year when it told a parent that it would cost $33.1 million for the district to review 21,500 emails that contained some form of the phrase “anti-retaliation.”
The parent placed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the district. However, such claims of multi-million costs to recover information are not unheard of. In 2009, the Michigan State Police said a FOIA the Mackinac Center for Public Policy put in requesting information about Homeland Security spending would cost $6.8 million.
Sunshine Week.
Friday marks the final day of Sunshine Week, a five-day period that focuses on transparency in government, specifically the Freedom of Information Act.
Both Democrats and Republicans had wanted to reform the FOIA law over the years.
Parts of the law that could be reviewed.
The FOIA law now has a clause that states that municipalities can charge up to 50% of the cost of benefits of the employee who is doing the record search.
While million dollar bills draw headlines, charges for information ranging to a couple hundred of dollars can be just as much a roadblock to transparency for parents.
Vague wording.
The law is also very vague as to when documents have to be presented by the municipality once they are paid for by the requestor. The law says they must be turned over in a “reasonable” amount of time. What is reasonable is left up to the government to decide.
“For years, FOIA has suffered from the same problems,” said Steve Delie, an attorney who deals with FOIAs for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “Requests are too expensive, and government regularly takes so long to produce them that they lose most of their value. Even when records are produced, they are often so heavily redacted that they serve no purpose.”
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Delie continued: “Michigan’s FOIA is in need of a serious overhaul. Unless things change, FOIA will fail to fulfill its core purpose—to provide citizens with the records they need to hold government accountable.”