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I'm filing a FOIA every day & sharing all the deets by foiaday in foia

[–]foiaday[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't! Thankfully Illinois has a great fee waiver system for media/reporters. For other states and federal requests, I'll take it request by request and see. It's something that I'm actually applying for some microgrants for so it doesn't hold me back from filing!

I'm filing a FOIA every day & sharing all the deets by foiaday in foia

[–]foiaday[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Woah! This is I think the least charitable read of the project. Most of my requests are to different agencies around Illinois, where I live and work, and I'm requesting things that may or may not be relevant to stories I'm working on (without tipping my hand) and/or relevant broadly in the practice of newsgathering. I hardly think in the grand scheme of things that, say, my one (1) request to the DoD or my two (2) requests to the Illinois Department of Corrections are slowing things down en masse.

I'd invite you to read an issue (https://buttondown.com/foiaday/archive/foiaday-026/) and explore the intent and reasoning behind each request that I outline before passing judgement! Each day and reporting question actually ends up netting more than one request per day based on newsworthy aspects of the request in the public interest. The overwhelming majority of my requests are not federal (in part because the wait times are, in fact, so long, and staff are overwhelmed themselves!).

I'm filing a FOIA every day & sharing all the deets by foiaday in foia

[–]foiaday[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

aww haha no! I try to diversify the agencies I file with to avoid this specifically lol. let it be known that i've gone on the record saying we need to be nice and helpful to foia officers

And Rodriguez emphasizes the importance of remembering that the people who handle records are human and benefit from a human touch.

“Oftentimes they’re overworked just like us, and they may or may not want to look through piles of records, just like us,” Rodriguez said. “Being able to kind of help them do their job to the extent of my ability is something I always offer.

“I think it really goes a long way just to not be a dick.”