After several letters from the Illinois Attorney General indicating that Urbana’s new fees for public records are a violation the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, FOIA Officer Curt Borman quietly removed his pricing scheme document from the City’s website.
The Backstory:
Mayor Marlin appointed Assistant City Attorney Curt Borman, a retired police officer, to be Urbana’s new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer on June 8th, 2020. Previously, public records requests were always handled by the City Clerk, but Deputy City Clerk Wendy Hundley said that the City’s FOIA process is now under the control of the City Legal Department.
In response to increasing requests for police records, Curt Borman, along with City Attorney James Simon, crafted an illegal scheme for charging public records fees. Over the course of three months, the Urbana City legal department conspired to charge residents thousands of dollars of illegal FOIA fees, and denied records to any person unable to pay the fees. Borman has also denied public records requests which attempt to acquire more information about these fees and how many people were charged. Such a denial is itself another FOIA violation.
On June 16th, an Urbana resident was charged $730.63 for some police body camera video from a single incident, $20 for some emails, and $27.97 for a copy of the Urbana Police Department Policies. The policies were posted online, but heavily redacted, and the CPRB and even the Urbana City Council weren’t allowed to see them. After a review, the Illinois Attorney General said that the $768 total was unlawful (article here), and Urbana could only charge for the DVD’s and a USB flash drive, which totaled $10.63. Several months after the initial request, the UPD delivered a copy of their new policies (still redacted), and the original policies remain a secret.
On June 23rd, one Urbana resident was charged $702.66 for Urbana Police dash-cam video from the arrest of Quintin Brown and Wayne Colson (who sat in Champaign County jail for a year before the State’s Attorney, Julia Rietz, determined there was no evidence to charge them). The City should have only charged $2.66 for the DVD’s, but the request was ultimately denied when the requester could not afford the $702.66.
A different requester was charged $147.97 for a list of Urbana Police officers and their photos, another person was charged $87.97 for some police complaints and injury reports, and yet another Urbana resident was charged $128.35 for one dash-cam video and one police report (article here). All of these fees, as well as all of the instances described above, share two traits: they are all illegal, and they are all fees the likes of which Urbana had never attempted before Marlin appointed Curt Borman as FOIA Officer.
Though they had been doing so for years, the City of Urbana also began to refuse to email public records (article here). Instead, they began charging $7.97 for USB flash drives on each request, no matter how small. They also began charging data fees on requests. Previously, the City was known to email up to 22 megabytes of data for free. Under the new system, 7.19 megabytes was charged $20 for the data and $7.97 for a flash drive. Another request in July was $20 for 0.475 megabytes, plus $20 for another 0.0938 megabytes, plus $7.97 for a flash drive. To provide perspective, the file size on these last two items, if provided as a PDF, indicate that they are about six pages, and one page in size, respectively.
The City also tried to charge postage for mailing the flash drives, which is another fee that is simply not allowed for in the Illinois FOIA statute (article here). Assistant City Clerk Lizabeth Kay Meharry told multiple requesters that they had to pay for postage, or send a prepaid return envelope to her.
The Conclusion:
The City Legal Department made a big show of their FOIA procedures by giving a nearly two-hour long presentation on at the July 20th City Council meeting, and even defended their illegal pricing scheme after several Urbana residents complained. After the Illinois Attorney General sent several letters to the City indicating that their FOIA fees charged by Curt Borman and James Simon were illegal, no action whatsoever was taken to rectify the situation.
No person from the City apologized or made any public announcement of the change in their pricing scheme. Curt Borman just quietly directly Lizabeth Kay Meharry to replace his pricing document with a new one. The original pricing document, as well as Borman’s email to Meharry, can be viewed here (click for full 5-page PDF):
