I hope all of Representative Greenburg’s FOIA bills pass. Open Government is a good thing, not that it will make it run any more efficiently, but a good thing none the less. We especially need to get the Every Cent Exposed law passed for the exact reason you mentioned of “losing” taxpayer money, which should have the additional benefit of exposing more corruption.

Wait, based on some of the recent legislative audit findings, they don’t even manage to keep track of the taxpayers money. If you use this excuse, you might just have a point after all.

Would it not be fairly simple to do the following:

1) Request from every state agency, board and commission the number of FOIA requests they received during the previous calendar year,
2) Request a breakdown from every state agency, board and commission resolution of each request, i.e., complied with, denied, reason for denial, and any still in progress.
3) Place all the numbers generated above into columns and then total the columns at the bottom of the page.
4) Determine the number of total denials as compared to a) the total number of submissions, b) number of days in the year, c) total number of work days in the year, and d) anything else that stands out. Items that stand out might be a single agency, board or commission that has a large number of denials, etc.

Use the information above to determine if there even is a problem with a large number of denials.

I still say the easiest and cleanest method is to go to the legislator and have him or her make the request of the AG’s office. Of course, legislators would then be in the trick-box of either pissing off a voter or pissing off the AG. Ouch, a legislator in a trick-box…no wonder this is why I get few answers about using a legislator in the loop.

Currently, a state representative may seek an AG’s opinion regarding an issue of law in this state. Why is it not easier than doing a whole bunch of legislation for the citizen who happens to be turned down to simply turn to his or her legislator and seek their assistance in filing an FOIA. The legislator could 1) advise the citizen in the legislator’s humble opinion, the FOIA is full of hooey and decline to submit the request to the AG on that basis, 2) advise the citizen in the legislator’s humble opinion, the FOIA was declined on merit and decline to submit the request to the AG on that basis, or 3) agree with the citizen that something is smelly about the decline and issue a request for an AG’s opinion regarding the legality of the declined FOIA request. This procedure is followed time and time again. Why won’t it work here?

If I have a question regarding the legality of an issue, I may seek out my legislator and request he or she file a query with the AG. Is the citizen who wishes to further the declined FOIA attempt not doing the exact same thing?