Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer today blasted Attorney General Mike Cox for charging over $143,000 to search for public records on lawsuit settlements sought in a FOIA request by Brewer.
“For a man who has been claiming for years that he supports open government, it is pure hypocrisy for Mike Cox to hide behind these obscene fees,” Brewer said. “What is he hiding? Michigan taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.”
Brewer hand delivered the original request on April 8, 2009. The Attorney General then gave himself an extension before submitting a response on April 30, 2009.
“Cox’s office has already located and reviewed the public records containing much of the requested information to create the self-promoting settlement ‘summaries’ and press releases on his website,” observed Brewer. “The only reason to charge such an outrageous fee is to prevent the public from discovering the real facts for themselves by seeing those public records.”
Mark, IOKIYAR. You should know that by now. Transparency is for "other people".
But this does beg the question - why is Cox both stalling and demanding money for what should be public record? Nothing on the wires about this yet, will update with reaction when it comes out.
Update: Cox office claims that all 8,000 pages are available already and it would take 4,400 labor hours to put the info together. And yet somehow, we are supposed to put the entire state budget online for the wingnuts to see. THAT wouldn't take much time at all, would it.