After
receiving hundreds of requests for records under the Michigan Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) from a resident, Kim Orlich, city officials in
Belding, MI, northeast of Grand Rapids, were exasperated. Searches for records and hearing appeals
in response to Orlich’s requests were consuming huge amounts of time,
distracting staff and city council from other business, at no small
expense to the community’s budget.
Belding
officials discovered that a warrant had been issued for Orlich’s arrest
in a civil debt case pending in St. Ignace, just the other side of the
Mackinac Bridge. Belding police volunteered to deliver Orlich free of
charge, after authorities in St. Ignace declined to drive down to pick
her up.
With Orlich in jail,
Belding officials theorized, they could deny her most recent requests
because the city had no duty under state law to meet the requests of an
inmate.
The
point of this post is not to insist that Orlich had every right to
seek all the information she wished, nor to criticize Orlich for being a
nuisance, nor accuse her of harassment.
The
point of this post is not to charge the City of Belding with
retaliation, nor to accuse it of abuse of process or violation of
Orlich’s civil rights.
The point of this post is that technology is available today to post all non-exempt government records online in easily searchable archives the instant the records are created or acquired. It’s called proactive disclosure or open data, and it’s being practiced all over the country, at the federal level and in state agencies and municipalities, large and small. The information seeker simply goes to the government’s website and follows the prompts. Unless a question of exemption comes up, the public can view and copy records for free without distracting any government employee from his or her work.
Public officials, please explore these opportunities. Government at all levels should make the information we all paid for available to us online, directly and easily accessible and without cost to either the information seeker or the government.
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