[XLFD]

Talk about wasting taxpayer money. I do not recommend this to anyone, but some people apparently believe that everybody who has ever had to pay a processing fee for FOIA requests can deviously circumvent the actual total costs to the city taxpayers by conspiring with other people to submit the exact same FOI request.
An hypothetical example is an original FOI request ultimately costs the city taxpayers approximately $200 in government employee wages to locate and compile the info. The original FOI requester decides that $200 is more than he is willing to pay so he conspires with 4 family or friends to submit the exact same FOI request with the intent the city will have to divide that original $200 by all 5 co-conspirators so that each will be asked to pay only $40 ($200 divided by 5). Then, the original requester pays the $40 and his 4 co-conspiracers decline the information. The original FOI requester gets the information for $40 instead of $200 and has bilked the taxpayer.
The above event could be based on an actual local event. One person openly admitted on another local forum: “That weekend, (name deleted) organized three other people, including me, to send out our own FOIA request just containing one request, so that we would get the information without the prohibitive, unlawful costs. “

[The Homogenizer]

Originally Posted by XLFD

Talk about wasting taxpayer money. I do not recommend this to anyone, but some people apparently believe that everybody who has ever had to pay a processing fee for FOIA requests can deviously circumvent the actual total costs to the city taxpayers by conspiring with other people to submit the exact same FOI request.
An hypothetical example is an original FOI request ultimately costs the city taxpayers approximately $200 in government employee wages to locate and compile the info. The original FOI requester decides that $200 is more than he is willing to pay so he conspires with 4 family or friends to submit the exact same FOI request with the intent the city will have to divide that original $200 by all 5 co-conspirators so that each will be asked to pay only $40 ($200 divided by 5). Then, the original requester pays the $40 and his 4 co-conspiracers decline the information. The original FOI requester gets the information for $40 instead of $200 and has bilked the taxpayer.
The above event could be based on an actual local event. One person openly admitted on another local forum: “That weekend, (name deleted) organized three other people, including me, to send out our own FOIA request just containing one request, so that we would get the information without the prohibitive, unlawful costs. “

Evil begets evil. Governments tend to operate covertly. Had the municipality been open to daylight since its inception, it would not cost $200 for a bit of information.

I think any municipality that incurs $200 for gathering information should compensate federal tax payers for the cost of developing and implementing the FOIA since such organizations are the parties responsible for the necessity of the act.

Perhaps, they should invest a little in organizing their records in order to make the process less financially burdensome.

[XLFD]

Originally Posted by The Homogenizer

Evil begets evil. Governments tend to operate covertly. Had the municipality been open to daylight since its inception, it would not cost $200 for a bit of information.

I think any municipality that incurs $200 for gathering information should compensate federal tax payers for the cost of developing and implementing the FOIA since such organizations are the parties responsible for the necessity of the act.

Perhaps, they should invest a little in organizing their records in order to make the process less financially burdensome.

Most of your comments are correct except compensating federal tax payers with local taxpayer money. That is not logical because the Federal FOIA was developed and implemented for Federal Records only. Each state has its own rules and own FOIA's.