But bureaucrats seem to believe it’s always safer to redact than not to, no matter how silly and harmless their “information” may be.
The CIA director in 2017 sent out his mom’s “secret” recipe for fudge as an email attachment. But after a reporter filed an FOIA request for memos the director sent to his staff, the recipe was redacted. The same thing happened in 2021, when the State Department redacted the CIA director’s favorite sandwich and pizza toppings.
Fudge? Pizza toppings? Seriously?
All 50 states have some form of legislation guaranteeing freedom of information, but various states’ bureaucrats still find ingenious ways to try to avoid answering requests.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
In 2015, New Jersey authorities denied a copy of an autopsy report on a dolphin found dead in the South River, citing (no joke) the dolphin’s right to medical privacy.
The Lessie Moore Elementary School in Pineville, Louisiana, allowed distribution of a church booklet that touched on sex, sparking off a big flap. The school district, when hit with an information request about it, responded that there would be a $2 million charge for fulfilling the request. (They were eventually shamed into waiving it.)
The Massachusetts State Police demanded $176,431 to provide documents on police recruits who leave the police academy before they graduate.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they had spent a year and a half looking for requested records and “no records responsive to your request were found.” Guess where the requested documents were ultimately found? On ICE’s website!
You just can’t make this stuff up.
A requester asking for information about a certain type of forensic device the Secretary of Defense had in his possession received a response that the search would take 15 million labor hours and $660 million to answer. When the request was sent to a different department, the answer came back in about 10 minutes.
While these examples are so ludicrous it’s hard not to laugh, what’s at stake is no laughing matter. As Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard famously said, “Democracy depends exclusively on the informedness of the individual citizen.”
As you read this, Maryland legislators are considering a bill that would allow bureaucrats to ignore information requests the departments consider “harassing.”
“A citizen or organization could be banned from receiving any records they might request on any topic,” Michael Sanderson, executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties, said. “And this total ban can be for any specified period of time, which could be five years, 20 years or even a lifetime.”
Anne Arundel County House Member Brian A. Chisholm warned: “We’re taking one step closer to saying, ‘We don’t want the public to see what we do.’”
That is a step which should never be taken. As taxpayers, we pay these people’s salaries.
How dare they hide information from us.
