Michigan FOIA Panel on the Road

Over a three week period from mid-July to early August, representatives of the Center for Michigan, the Michigan Press Association, the Mackinac Center and the American Civil Liberties Union are conducting public panel discussions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Open Meetings Act (OMA).  

Both statutes were intended to enable closer public scrutiny of government activity.  However, over the years both have been watered down in some instances and ignored in others.  There have been a number of legislative initiatives to reform FOIA and OMA recently, but nothing came of them. It's widely thought that greater citizen involvement is necessary to bring about meaningful change.

A press release announcing the panel discussions said, "Our state has valuable tools for holding public servants accountable but those tools are useless if people don’t know about them or don’t know how to use them."

The first such meeting was in Jackson.  The second will be in Grand Rapids on the Northwood University campus on July 24.  

The Traverse Area District Library in Traverse City will host the third discussion on August 1, and the fourth will be on August 7 in Troy at the Northwood University campus there.  

All are set to start at 6:00 p.m. and are scheduled to end around 8:00 p.m.

If you count yourself among the 10 percent who get things done in your community, your attendance at one of these panel discussions should be very beneficial.  

"Sunshine" Week and the prospect for FOIA reform

Here we are again in "Sunshine" Week, more than a year after a bill was filed in the Michigan House to add the Michigan Legislature to the list of state government functions subject to the state's ancient Freedom of Information Act.  That bill expired in December at the end of the previous legislative term.

Another bill, designed to encourage more prompt government responses to FOIA requests and establish lower, uniform retrieval and copying costs, was filed last September.  It, too, died at the end of the last legislative term, but was resurrected by Rep. Mike Shirkey at the beginning of the new term in January.  Shirkey's bill has had the active support of the Michigan Press Association.

The flaw in both of these proposals to amend Michigan FOIA is that they are based on the old FOIA model, which requires a request to a government unit's "FOIA Coordinator" in order to obtain public information, subjecting the request to the scrutiny,  approval and convenience of personnel in that particular unit.

Genuine reform, now being implemented to various degrees in most federal agencies, requires that non-exempt public information be posted on searchable websites (often referred to as "reading rooms") by the various government offices as soon as the information is created or acquired.  In this process, government staff do not play gatekeeper; nor are they distracted from other duties in order to conduct a search.


This proactive approach for public access to government records should be adopted by the states.