MCPS Charging Parental Rights Group $18K to Fulfill Public Information Request

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will be interesting to see what the records say. The price is absurd given how much tech is used for these types of searches. As a former GC, I can tell you private companies charge less for larger searches over longer periods of time.

Absurd in that it covers their costs which seems fair to us taxpayers. I mean why should we shoulder the burden for these wacky requests.

If you’ve ever gone through a search like this, you’d know there’s justification for it requiring 3 months of effort. The request is pretty limited in scope.

Definitely and they should cover the costs, not the taxpayers.

Pp, I forgot the “not” word in my last post. Sure, make them pay for the search, but there’s no rational justification for making this 3 months worth of work. This should take 10 minutes to run and search, and 1-2 minutes per email returned to process them.

Have to disagree. It should take 3+ months and they should pay for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will be interesting to see what the records say. The price is absurd given how much tech is used for these types of searches. As a former GC, I can tell you private companies charge less for larger searches over longer periods of time.

Private companies don't get FOIA'ed. What a stupid comment.

It’s called discovery. In litigation, uses the same types of search parameters as a FOIA. I’ve done both.

Again, the charges are excessive. Unless they are using tech from 1990.

Responding to discovery requests is not the same as responding to FOIA requests. FOIA requests are subject to exemptions from disclosure that are not applicable in litigation discovery. As people have noted several times, you can use technology to identify emails that include search terms, but someone still has to review the documents retrieved to determine which are exempt from disclosure, which should be disclosed, and what information needs to be redacted. Also, an email could be two sentences or two pages, it could have no exhibits or several exhibits. All of these are factors.