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I finally paid $75 for a FOIA request on a zoning meeting and it was the best money I've spent in a while
There was a city council meeting last fall about a data center going up near my neighborhood and the minutes online were super vague about who pushed it through. So I dropped $75 on a records request just to see the emails between the developer and two council members. Turns out one of them was getting campaign money from a group tied to the developer, which was never mentioned in any of the news coverage. Not saying it proves some giant plot, but it definitely shows why I don't trust the summary versions anymore. Has anyone else tried the public records route on a local fight like this?
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olivia_hernandez19d ago
I've done this three times now for different fights in my area and the fee schedule depends a lot on how you word the request. If you ask for "all emails between X and Y" they'll hit you with a huge search fee, but if you narrow it to a date range and a few keywords they usually can't charge as much. Also ask for the metadata, not just the body, because the timestamps and who was CC'd tell you way more than the actual words sometimes. One thing nobody tells you is you can ask for a fee waiver if the records serve the public interest, and a lot of clerks will just say yes if you push back once. Keep a folder of everything you get because once you start pulling records on one council member you'll find reasons to pull on the others too. That campaign money link you found is exactly the kind of thing that never makes the paper because reporters don't have the time to file these requests anymore.
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