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What did your agency do?

Michigan law says five business days. One agency answered in nineteen. One is at forty-six and counting. Same statute, same request, same week.

I am building a scorecard of how agencies actually behave when you ask them for records. How fast they answer, what they charge, which exemption they reach for, and whether anything ever shows up.

Five agencies taught me more than a year of reading about FOIA did. Five hundred would be worth something to everyone who files after you. So if you sent a request, tell me what came back. Good, bad, or nothing at all. Nothing at all is data.

Only the agency and the state are required. Skip anything you do not have.

Agency (required)

City or county (optional)

State (required)

What you asked for (optional)

Date you sent it (optional)

Date they answered (optional)

How did it go? (optional)

Fee they quoted (optional)

Fee you actually paid (optional)

Exemption they cited (optional)

Did you appeal? (optional)

Anything strange (optional)

Your email (optional, only so I can ask a follow-up)

Want credit by name? (optional, blank means no)

What I do with this

Agencies get named. People do not.

Published: the agency name, its city and state, how long it took, what it charged, which exemption it cited, and the outcome. I may quote the language of a denial letter, because the language is the part worth showing other people.

Never published:

Your name, email, address, or phone number.
The records you got. Those are yours, and I am not asking for files.
The name of any individual employee at any agency. Not the coordinator, not the clerk, not the attorney. Names come out of anything I quote.
Anything that identifies you sideways. If you are the only person in a town of 900 who filed, I describe it so it does not point at you, or I leave it out.

You keep everything you send. Nothing transfers to me.
Sending it gives me permission to use the agency-level facts above in videos, the newsletter, a public scorecard, and any database I build from this.
Do not send anything you are not allowed to share. Under a protective order, a settlement, an NDA, or a seal, keep it. I would rather have a gap in the data than a problem in your life.
Take individual names out before you send. I will take out any that get through, but assume I am slower at it than you are.
I cannot promise legal confidentiality. One person with a newsletter, not a lawyer and not a shield law. Send accordingly.
You can pull out. Email and I remove it from the working data. Anything already in a published video stays there, because I cannot un-publish a video.

None of this is legal advice, including the parts that cite statutes.

I read that, it is mine to share, and I am good with the agency-level facts being published.