Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "State Sup Ct Tells Governor to Comply w/FOIA Requests" video.

Reasonable costs (even paying someone to collate and copy documents) is built into most FOIA laws. Exorbitant or punitive costs could also open them up to a FOIA suit, which is why at the end of the day they only charged you $20 for the thumb drive—it probably took someone less than a half hour to find and copy a folder onto your drive. They were trying to frighten you off with the threat of exorbitant costs, obviously. You can easily shoot down threats by asking questions: how does the department enforce policy among officers and employees when the policy documents are so difficult to locate? How does it train officer in policy if the policy documents are unavailable? Are the documents spread among several custodians who jealously guard them from each other?
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@ohsweetmystery No, but it needs to be amended. There is good justification for such laws. However, there is also clearly abuse of the qualified immunity laws. The solution is to take away the ability to abuse the law while still protecting government from frivolous law suits and individuals from doing their jobs in a lawful manner. What you are recommending would bog down governments and eat up budgets.
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Copy machine was broken, so they had to transcribe the documents by hand. 😉
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@ebr-fan1117 You have to consider how such laws could be abused by anyone disgruntled by a politician or official. How would courts accommodate a huge increase in frivolous cases, for example? How would politicians and officials get any work done if they were constantly responding to frivolous cases? We’d need to expand the courts to handle the increased volume, hiring more judges and court workers. We might need to build new courthouses. You’re asking the public to bear an even greater burden because you think someone is not doing their job properly. There is also already a remedy in the case of elected officials. You replace them at the next election.
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Who has standing to bring such a suit? Any citizen? What if the government settles with a plaintiff? Should any citizen be allowed to bring a suit against individuals any time the government pays plaintiff’s fees and costs, no matter the circumstances? This is just for a start. Which individuals do you sue? What if there is an agreement with the government to indemnify employees subject to these costs? When you get into the details, there are a lot of unforeseen consequences. You have to make sure you aren’t incentivizing behavior and policy you want to avoid. I think your scheme would lead to too many problems to count.
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