The City of Evanston, Illinois is refusing to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records of sexual misconduct within the Parks and Recreation Department – a scandal involving female lifeguards and other beach workers that has amassed intense public attention over the past year.
On the morning of July 28th, 2022, Check CU sent a FOIA request to Evanston seeking the following:
“All complaints/petitions/notices received by the City regarding sexual misconduct within the Parks and Recreation Department.
All reports created in the course of the City’s (or their agents) investigation(s) into the allegations of sexual misconduct regarding lakefront employees, and reports regarding the City’s handling of those incidents.”
Less than eight hours later, an unidentified Evanston staff member said that they would refuse to respond to the request unless it was narrowed, but no other details were provided.
An email from the unnamed Evanston staff member read, “The extraordinary volume of documents (estimated to be over unknown amount pages and estimated unknown amount of staff hours and multiple staff members to fill the request is too burdensome on City resources to produce the request as drafted.”
It seems that either the number of sexual misconduct complaints against the City of Evanston are so voluminous that an estimate of their size is not even possible, or Evanston City staff could not be bothered to provide a real estimate.
Section 3(g) of the FOIA statute describes the “unduly burdensome” declaration:
“Requests calling for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information. Before invoking this exemption, the public body shall extend to the person making the request an opportunity to confer with it in an attempt to reduce the request to manageable proportions. If any public body responds to a categorical request by stating that compliance would unduly burden its operation and the conditions described above are met, it shall do so in writing, specifying the reasons why it would be unduly burdensome and the extent to which compliance will so burden the operations of the public body. Such a response shall be treated as a denial of the request for information.”
A FOIA request cannot simply be declared unduly burdensome. Balanced against the burden of producing records (a degree of burden which is apparently unknown) is the degree of public interest in those records. According to the FOIA statute (Section 9(a)), public bodies are also supposed to provide “a detailed factual basis for the application of any exemption claimed” – this is meant to ensure that requesters aren’t simply handed vague records denials.
In this case, sexual misconduct allegations involving Evanston City employees is apparently of such minimal public interest that even an estimate of resources needed to comply with the FOIA request was not worth it. Evanston appears unwilling to provide “a detailed factual basis” for why their burden in producing the records is not justified by the public interest.
Check CU’s original FOIA request and the City’s response are provided below.
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