Some agencies have a different tactic: go really slowly.
I sent a public records request to my local school district on March 9th 2026.
They responded on 19th March 2026 saying they'd respond on in late April.
Since then, every month they've sent an email with some small portion of the records, with a PDF letter saying they'll send a follow up a month later.
I've received 8 of those responses so far, and there's no indication when, if ever, I will have received all the records responsive to my request.
CAcactacea17小时前
> the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04.
44k hours is ~21 years. Beyond absurd
BLblack_puppydog15小时前
Worth pointing out that Germany is having an ongoing battle over our FOIA equivalent, in which a host of people who were bitten badly by it (most notably Jens Spahn) are proposing to allow exactly this kind of prohibitive fee, as well as reducing access to natural persons (so the individual reporter, not the newspaper) and only to people who have a reasonable interest, etc.
Sure, the current form of the law has some issues on the receiving end, but boy is this an obvious move to cover their own corruption better...
DAdabinat16小时前
This is comparatively a bargain compared to what the DoD wanted to charge:
> In 2015, the Department of Defense told a Freedom of Information Act requester, who was asking for records on tools used to preserve data on seized devices, that fulfilling their request would take 15 million hours and cost $660 million.
(15 million hours = over 1700 years)
GHghusto16小时前
Freedom of Information Act in the UK means I make a request, and I get the information I asked for within 30 days. No excuses, no nonsense "fees".
Just what in the hell is happening in the USA?
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Some agencies have a different tactic: go really slowly. I sent a public records request to my local school district on March 9th 2026. They responded on 19th March 2026 saying they'd respond on in late April. Since then, every month they've sent an email with some small portion of the records, with a PDF letter saying they'll send a follow up a month later. I've received 8 of those responses so far, and there's no indication when, if ever, I will have received all the records responsive to my request.
> the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04. 44k hours is ~21 years. Beyond absurd
Worth pointing out that Germany is having an ongoing battle over our FOIA equivalent, in which a host of people who were bitten badly by it (most notably Jens Spahn) are proposing to allow exactly this kind of prohibitive fee, as well as reducing access to natural persons (so the individual reporter, not the newspaper) and only to people who have a reasonable interest, etc. Sure, the current form of the law has some issues on the receiving end, but boy is this an obvious move to cover their own corruption better...
This is comparatively a bargain compared to what the DoD wanted to charge: > In 2015, the Department of Defense told a Freedom of Information Act requester, who was asking for records on tools used to preserve data on seized devices, that fulfilling their request would take 15 million hours and cost $660 million. (15 million hours = over 1700 years)
Freedom of Information Act in the UK means I make a request, and I get the information I asked for within 30 days. No excuses, no nonsense "fees". Just what in the hell is happening in the USA?