I made a FOIA request shortly after my prior request to see the business dealings between the City and Tye Signs that was pretty much the same. It had the usual lead-in (and end parameters) and asked for these records, requested because of the concern that the City was having sidewalks installed by unlicensed contractors with a questionable competition -quelling contract:
"All contracts, bids on projects, correspondence (mail and E-mail), invoices, and receipts between the City Of Ludington or any of its divisions and Carr Creek Construction (or its owner Kevin Spuller) since the year 2008 inclusive."
FOIA Coordinator John Shay replied within time with the following reply:
"I have attached the City of Ludington ’s response to your FOIA request. The itemization of the $102.25 charge is as follows:
2.08 hours x $14.00/hr. = $29.12 + $15.38 fringe benefits + $77.75 copy charge (311 pages x $0.25/page) less $20 credit = $102.25"
In December 2010, the City Manager changed the rules for FOIA requests. He made it a lot more costly and difficult for common people to get FOIA requests. But here is his Revised FOIA Policy in .pdf. In that document, it says for inspection:
For months, Mr. Shay has been providing me original written records via scanned electronic files. He has rightly not charged for scanning, as the law says you shouldn't. There should be no exempt information on these transactions and contracts I requested. They can be sent without worrying about the protection or preserving of the documents. Yet, unlike many other times he has sent such records free, he has decided to charge for letting me inspect them this time. This is against policy and law. Taking this fee off, the charge is for 2.08 hours of clerk work (mostly scanning, one would think) that amounts to $29.12 + $15.38 = $44.50 of labor charges. Yet the revised FOIA says in sec. 5b:
Mr. Shay identified the labor costs to the City at $44.50 total. $44.50 is less than $50.00. Charges for labor below $50 means that the City has not experienced unreasonably high costs (see the , leading to 'no charge' for labor.
When you add up the new figures: $0 for copies, $0 for labor, and $0 for postage, you end up with $0. I can do that math.
Of course, this is nothing new. X has already shown that John Shay looks to be guilty of two misdemeanors in his efforts to quash the availability of city records. With the host of other things we've learned from the records we have seen, I can see why he does his best to do so.
