During the October 5th Urbana City Council discussion on the conduct of City legal staff in regards to public records requests, the question of requiring government identification was raised. City Attorney James Simon and Assistant City Attorney Curt Borman tried to justify their actions to the Council members.
Curt Borman claimed that the City needed to verify the identities of requesters in order to enforce the “recurrent requester” and “voluminous requester” provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This is, of course, not true, because the City is not obligated to enforce either of those provisions. They only desire to engage these provisions in order to intimidate requesters, delay the fulfillment of public records requests, and to levy higher fees upon requesters.
Before Mayor Marlin assigned Curt Borman, a retired police officer, to the position of FOIA Officer, the City of Urbana had no such requirements, and did not assess heavy fees as Curt Borman has been doing.
Borman’s claims during the October 5th Council meeting are also not consistent with the emails he sends to FOIA requesters, which clearly indicate that government ID is required to complete a FOIA request.
Here is an example of an email sent to a requester by Assistant City Attorney Curt Borman:
“Dear Requester:
This is the City of Urbana’s final request for you to provide complete contact information for the above FOIA request. We must verify your identity to enforce FOIA’s recurrent requester and voluminous request provisions. If the City cannot confirm your identity, we may treat your request as one from a recurrent requester. Therefore, no later than the close of business today, please either provide the complete contact information we previously requested or send a copy of your state ID or driver’s license to the City Clerk’s Office by email to CityClerk@urbanaillinois.us or by facsimile to 217-384-2301. If the City is unable to confirm your identity at this time, we may require you to present a government-issued photo identification document before we release any responsive records to you.
Thank you for your assistance.
Curt Borman
Assistant City Attorney
City of Urbana Legal Division
400 S. Vine Street
Urbana, IL 61801
217-384-2464”
Here is a line frequently sent in emails to requesters by Assistant City Clerk Lizabeth Kay Meharry:
“When retrieving your records, you must present a government-issued photo identification document (ID).”
Curiously, the FOIA law gives no authority to the public body to require any sort of identification. In fact, in a recent Public Access Counselor binding opinion, the Illinois Attorney General indicates that public bodies do not have the right to require ID. Here is a clip of PAC Letter 16-009 (click for full letter PDF):
Borman claimed that he needed to “verify that it is a real person” when he receives a FOIA request, but he did not make clear who or what, other than a real person, would submit a FOIA request. The Illinois FOIA law defines a “person” as “any individual, corporation, partnership, firm, organization or association, acting individually or as a group”. It doesn’t appear to be possible that a FOIA request could ever be submitted by anything other than a “person”, and the law provides no requirement that anyone identify themselves. James Simon even admitted that requests could be sent anonymously.
Borman and Simon also seemed to admit that they regularly make efforts to stalk FOIA requesters by trying to use various tools to investigate individuals. Their language suggests that they may be using government databases and/or internet search tools to attempt to acquire personal information about requesters. Again, the City of Urbana never engaged in such behavior before Marlin put Curt Borman in charge of public records.
Members of the public who have provided information for the article have indicated that they don’t feel comfortable giving personal information to Urbana staff, since they fear retribution for seeking records related to the misconduct of City employees (typically police). The actions of Simon and Borman would seem to indicate that Urbana residents are correct to fear retribution for seeking public records.
Perhaps James Simon and Curt Borman could better spend their time simply providing the public records, rather than trying to dig up private information on the requester in an attempt to intimidate, delay, and fine them.
Illinois Leaks also wrote an article this issue, along with 39 pages of supporting documents which they received from the City of Urbana: City Of Urbana Wrongfully Demands Gov’t Issued Photo ID From FOIA Requesters
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
The portion of the October 5th Urbana City Council discussion on FOIA that dealt with the ID requirement can be viewed here:
Surprisingly, an ARCD web-site “Lawyer Finder” search return shows Mr. Borman is currently registered and was admitted to practice law in Illinois 24 years ago.
Without “FOIA Officer” appearing as a duty within his role as Assistant City Attorney, it seems fairly clear that a lay person acting as FOIA officer would be less likely to get lost in the ‘legal’ weeds put forth by his department. Yah, it’s an administrative burden to adhere to FOIA law.
Referrals to the PAC is a measure of FOIA compliance; and a rate declining from an average (plus or minus quality control limits) might sustain the gain. However, unless the PAC FOIA’s the referring agency for metrics on FOIA requests they process, the PAC won’t know what’s really happening upstream.