The Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois FOIA Office (“UIUC-FOIA”) doesn’t like me, I’m what was for a time called a “vex­a­tious filer,” mean­ing that (in addi­tion to pranc­ing around onstage yelling “Ta Ra Ra Boom Der Ay”) I file lots of FOIAs.  Prob­a­bly over 100 in less than a year and still counting.

Now as I’ve said many times already, if you file 100 ques­tions in one email, that’s exactly one FOIA, which UIUC-FOIA will reject as “unduly bur­den­some” because the total of what they have to do is too much.  And I under­stand that.

On the other hand, if you try to pre­vent the claim of “undue bur­den­some­ness” by fil­ing 100 sep­a­rate emails with only one ques­tion in each, you’ll be branded a “vex­a­tious filer” and sub­jected to mul­ti­ple delays as well as that label for 1 year.

So what’s a feller to do?  And where did this “vex­a­tious filer” thing come from?

As far as the first ques­tion, keep in mind that UIUC-FOIA has no pro­ce­dures (see early blogs) and is trigger-happy to claim requests are unduly bur­den­some.  So it’s very hard to fig­ure out how to cast a wide enough net to have a hope of get­ting answers from them with­out fil­ing enough ques­tions to have them slam you as a “vex­a­tious filer.”

 

1. Alsip and the 90 FOIAs filed the same day.

As for the sec­ond ques­tion, it turns out the impe­tus for this change in Illi­nois FOIA law came about in the Chicago sub­urb of Alsip, a vil­lage of about 20,000 peo­ple.  Seems that the for­mer police chief didn’t much like the mayor, so he (the chief) filed 90 FOIAs on one day, 9–7-10, thus over­whelm­ing the Alsip FOIA office and prompt­ing the Alsip mayor to lobby his state sen­a­tor to seek the changes in the law:

“Look, we are not try­ing to stop any legit­i­mate claims for infor­ma­tion,” said Alsip Mayor Patrick Kitch­ing, who asked his state sen­a­tor to file a bill that could limit the rights of polit­i­cal ene­mies to inun­date agen­cies with records requests.

“It gets to a point where peo­ple in the office can’t do the public’s busi­ness. We’ve been par­a­lyzed by some­one who is using FOIA as a weapon,” Kitch­ing said, refer­ring to a stack of 90 records requests his vil­lage received one day last year from a for­mer police chief and Vil­lage Board can­di­date locked in a bit­ter polit­i­cal feud with the mayor.¹

 

1. The 90 FOIAs, for your delectation.

I’m never one to over­look data, and the Alsip story was too fas­ci­nat­ing — and the end-result too-close-to-home, so I FOIAed the good peo­ple of Alsip to get copies of every sin­gle one of those 90 FOIAs.

Let me be per­fectly clear on this: the FOIA offi­cer in Alsip is a really really really nice lady!  I filed the FOIA before Christ­mas, 2014, she got back to me promptly and politely, and we quickly agreed that I was more than will­ing to delay the response until after the hol­i­days, so as not to over-tax their office.  And because I’m an all-around-nice-guy, UIUC-FOIA’s opin­ions of me notwith­stand­ing.²

In due course I got the 90 FOIAs, and I present them here for your view­ing pleasure:

dalzell1_Redacted

dalzell2_Redacted

 

3. UIUC-FOIA, you may not like my FOIA fil­ings, but I’m not vex­a­tious, so please stop mak­ing snotty remarks about me.

If you look at those 90 FOIAs, you’ll quickly see how much destruc­tive intent went into them.  The filer might as well have asked the Alsip­i­ans to count the squares of toi­let paper they had on hand.³

My FOIA fil­ings, on the other hand, may be annoy­ing to UIUC per­son­nel and the FOIA office, but they’re not any­thing like that Alsip case.  So why do the fine UIUC peo­ple feel it so impor­tant to con­stantly com­ment on the num­ber of appro­pri­ate fil­ings I’ve made:⁴

 

 

Now per­haps Ms. McCarthy just wants to high­light the fact that UIUC-FOIA needs to make sure I haven’t renewed my vexatious-filer sta­tus?  Sure, that’s a pos­si­bil­ity … but based on the things UIUC-FOIA had to say about me in its responses to var­i­ous of my FOIA appeals to the Illi­nois Attor­ney General’s office, I think the rea­son is sim­pler: UIUC-FOIA thinks I’m a bad seed, rather than a pub­lic cit­i­zen seek­ing the truth.

I’ll close with some UIUC-FOIA ver­biage to that con­clu­sion –⁵ appar­ently I ought sip a brandy and smoke a good hand-rolled cigar between each email I send?

 

 

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About the Mar­quee image (avail­able at V&A Music Sheet Cov­ers)

Music sheet cover, ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’

Music sheet cover
’Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’
Sung by Lot­tie Collins
Designed by W. T. Stan­nard, printed by Charles Sheard and Com­pany, writ­ten by Richard Mor­ton, music arranged by Angelo A. Asher
About 1891
Museum no. S.4105–2009
© Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum, London

Music hall per­former Lot­tie Collins became a house­hold name thanks to the song ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’ and the dance that went with it. She would begin the song slowly and qui­etly and then at the end of the first verse she would leave a long pause, put one hand on her hip and launch into the cho­rus and a wild can-can dance. Her high kicks, accom­pa­nied by a big drum and ‘an excited foam of lace pet­ti­coat’ delighted or shocked audi­ences, depend­ing on their sen­si­bil­i­ties. The play­wright George Bernard Shaw went to see her per­form in 1892 while still in his 20s and described how she did three low kicks on the ‘Ta-ra-ra’ and then a high kick on the ‘boom’. He added admir­ingly, ‘Miss Collins appears to be in fine ath­letic training.’

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1. See Chicago Tri­bune, 4-3-2011 at Chicago Tri­bune — Change in FOIA law. [↩]
2. Actu­ally I believe it’s more likely not the FOIA offi­cer per se, but rather likely Laura Clower in that office, who’s con­vinced I’m suing UIUC (I’m not),likely  Laura Frerichs, who apart from being head of the Research Park seems to think I’m “harass­ing” her by fil­ing FOIAs, etc. etc.  It would be funny if it weren’t pathetic. [↩]
3. Note that UIUC-FOIA would either have responded the request was a) unduly bur­den­some, or b) that FOIA law does not require them to com­pile records that aren’t already com­piled.  Either way, UIUC-FOIA would make sure you didn’t know if they had a square to spare. [↩]
4. From the UIUC-FOIA FOIA pro­duc­tion 14–252. [↩]
5. See Schein­man FOIA Appeals (thus far) [↩]