MIWASHTE-L Archives

Archiver > MIWASHTE > 2004-10 > 1098404965


From: Lawrence Kestenbaum <>
Subject: Re: [MIWASHTE] County lookups in Washtenaw
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:29:34 -0400 (EDT)
References: <s177c32b.052@gwia02.state.mi.us> <Pine.LNX.4.61.0410211934050.2837@bacon.hamjudo.com><033701c4b7c8$3ba88aa0$30cfec18@jancortez>
In-Reply-To: <033701c4b7c8$3ba88aa0$30cfec18@jancortez>


On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, Jan Cortez wrote:

> What I find most interesting about this whole topic is that failure to
> disclose public record is a Violation of the Freedom of Information Act. I
> do realize that there are some records not subject to disclosure, such as
> births during a certain period of time, personnel records, etc., but as an
> attorney Mr. Kestenbaum, I would think that you most certainly could have
> made some sort of issue over this. While the County Clerk is the official
> keeper of the records, there is such as thing as violation of this act, if
> in fact what I am hearing on this list is true, in that she is withholding
> open public records from disclosure.
>
> Would be most interested in your take on this.

It's not as simple as that. She wasn't preventing the records from being
disclosed -- rather, she was charging extortionate fees for them.

The remedy for a violation of the Freedom of Information Act is to go to
court to get a judge to order compliance. Indeed, I have been to court to
enforce FOIA. However, in this case I was trying for a more gentle
approach, to persuade the Clerk to use her discretion in a sensible way,
rather than creating litigation between two county officials.

Moreover, though I have not looked at this recently, I believe that birth
and death records as such (and the fees charged) are not fully subject to
FOIA, due to exceptions in the statutes.

The fact that the clerk's office repeatedly and falsely denied having a
particular record would probably be seen as a "mistake" rather than a
violation. In the past, I have dealt with this by asking the public body
to acknowledge in writing that they have violated the statute which makes
it a crime to destroy certain kinds of public records; this invariably
motivates them to discover the record they had insisted was "lost"!

Larry

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum,
Candidate for County Clerk/Register, http://KestenbaumCampaign.com
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106

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