FOIA does not require a public
body to answer questions
July 24, 2020
"FOIA does not require a public body to answer
questions."
That's what the Board of Water and Light's
Assistant FOIA Coordinator told me in an email yesterday.
On January 14 of this year, I sent a FOIA request
to the Lansing Board of Water and Light
asking for the
following information for all BWL employees who were employed during the
2019 calendar year:
I asked that the
information be provided in a digital file.
|
My request was
denied
March 11 because "your request asks for a report in a specific format that does
not exist" and "FOIA does not require a public body to make a report of
information." I modified my request, saying I'd accept the information
in any form, and when I didn't get a response to my email, I
appealed to
the Board of Commissioners by letter. The
BWL Assistant FOIA Coordinator -
responding July
17 on behalf of David Price, Chair of the Board of Commissioners - "reaffirmed" the denial, saying a report containing
the information requested does not exist. However: |
 |
| |
 |
David Price |
Given the amount of
information and the time required to redact personal information, she
said, total
cost would be $1,527.12. That is for 36 hours at the hourly rate of
the lowest paid employee ($28.28) plus half of that ($14.14) for fringe
benefits for a total of $42.42 per hour. They'd require a good faith
deposit of $763.56.
I had some questions.
The email address given on the BWL's
FOIA page is
foiarequests@lbwl.com, but none of the 5 or 6 emails I'd sent to
that address since January got replies, so I used
the web form on
BWL's Contact Us page. (It
was my use of this online form that got the first response from BWL: the
denial.) This is what I said:
| |
This is for
Elissa McDaniels.
Elissa, in
your July 17 response to my FOIA appeal, you said redacted
compensation summaries could be provided. Are these lists of
employees or separate sheets for each employee? What is the
paper size, 8 1/2 by 11? And what about the W-2 federal wage
report? Is that also a paper report? If so, is it a single
document for each employee or a listing?
About how
many employees are there?
By the way,
I've attempted to email you several times over the last few
months and never got a response. It appears that you can email
me, but I can't email you. Is BWL blocking my emails? Do they
block everybody's email? |
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This was her response:
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Dear Mr. Harry:
It appears you are
utilizing the BWL customer service contact link on the website,
vs. the FOIA submission options https://www.lbwl.com/foia,
and this was forwarded to me. FOIA does not require a public
body to answer questions.
BWL will proceed with
responding to your FOIA request once the good faith deposit has
been received. |
|
So apparently I am to pay $1,527.12
for a pile of paper without any idea what it will look like. Because
"FOIA does not require a public body to answer questions."
I've reported on BWL, City of Lansing and CATA
employee wages before:
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|
2008 BWL |
Information
provided in two paper listings. 727 employees. I don't remember
being charged. |
|
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2010 City |
Digital file.
1435 employees. I was charged $719. |
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2016 City |
Digital file.
1138 employees. Not charged because they took so long to deliver. |
| |
2016 CATA |
PDF file,
which I was able to convert to Excel. 373 employees. No charge. |
|
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2018 CATA |
Excel file (after
much negotiation). 404 employees. I was charged $193.12. |
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