Government Agencies Can Come After Your Paycheck If You Don't Pay Your FOIA Fees

from the we-used-your-money-to-make-it-and-now-we're-taking-your-money-to-print-it dept

The struggle to force the government to behave in a transparent fashion often runs through the FOIA process. When the government responds, it often takes out meaningful information by abusing FOIA exemptions. When the government doesn't respond, the "free" request becomes a rather expensive trip through the nation's courts.

Even when the government responds, it may decide not to waive fees, leaving the requester to come up with anything from several hundred to several thousand dollars in order to see documents created with taxpayer funds by federal employees. Entities like MuckRock deal with this obstacle through crowdfunding. But not every requester has access to this sort of support. If the documents are delivered without full payment (some just require a first installment of a certain percentage), the government can come after you for the uncollected fees.

But the government's collection efforts go beyond series of increasingly angry letters. According to information compiled by indispensable blog Unredacted, the government has the option to start docking your paycheck.

In a letter to the FOIA Advisory Committee, Michael Ravnitzky points to an article at Washington-focused blog The Hill that indicates that some government agencies are willing to use this method to collect unpaid FOIA fees. [pdf link]

I would like to bring the following issue to the Committee’s attention: application of Administrative Wage Garnishment to fees assessed for Freedom of Information Act requests.

Federal agencies have begun exploring and instituting a new weapon to use against FOIA requesters: wage garnishment. Here is a link to an article that mentions two agencies: one that is implementing wage garnishment and one that has decided not to do so after receiving some unfavorable feedback.

http://tinyurl.com/FeeGarnishment

In this case, two agencies have already sought permission to use wage garnishment in FOIA cases for unpaid fees. A number of other agencies have established rules implementing the Administrative Wage Garnishment - AWG - provisions of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 - DCIA, but do not mention FOIA specifically. Other agencies are in the process of such rules, or are planning to add such rules.

As he cautions, the use of this collection method will only further encourage onerous and abusive fees.

Agencies often impose disproportionate fees that have the effect of deterring certain types of requests. For example, requesters frequently receive large fee letters without benefit of a preliminary call or note from the agency to discuss the possibility of a narrowed or more specified request, or to help clarify fee status.

Agency staff often charge review fees to noncommercial requesters, despite the fact that such fees are inapplicable. Agency staff frequently seek to charge search fees to newsmedia requesters, again despite the fact that such fees are inapplicable.

Noncommercial requesters are subject to search and review fees when responses are not provided within the statutory deadlines, even though the law precludes such fees, agencies asserting that all or nearly all the records requests they receive are subject to unusual and exceptional circumstances. Agencies even have imposed large page by page duplication fees, even when supplying electronic copies of records that already exist in electronic form.

As Ravnitzky notes, this form of collection is particularly intrusive and can have adverse effects on requesters. For the citizen on the receiving end, this can adversely affect current and future employment, as well as possibly prevent them from obtaining housing or vehicles. For those already employed, it informs employers of little more than the fact that their employee owes the government money -- which implies all sorts of unseen dishonesty.

Ravnitzky calls it the "nuclear option," one which certain agencies might deploy as further discouragement for future FOIA requests. Every government agency has many other options to resolve this issue (blocking of further requests and withholding of remaining responsive documents, to name a few) that this fee extraction method shouldn't even be on the table.

The most disgusting aspect of this is that certain agencies (and I imagine there will be more who warm to the idea) feel entitled to take funds (well, additional funds) right out of citizens' paychecks to pay for documents created, stored and distributed by taxpayer-funded agencies and taxpayer-funded employees. This isn't like a federally-funded school loan where the government has spotted a member of the public the money to finish their education. This is the government extracting fees for information it won't release until asked and charging ridiculous amounts for it. The fact that this method is available to government agencies is its own chilling effect, running directly contrary to the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act.

Filed Under: foia, garnishing wages, wages