Jeff Walik emails
It is a clone of this request.
| Submitted | Jan. 22, 2024 |
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Communications
From: Dillon Bergin
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:
Any and all emails sent to, from or cc’d Jeff Walik, between the dates of October 1, 2023, and the date that this request is ultimately fulfilled, containing any of the following non-case-sensitive keywords in the body or subject line of the emails or within an attachment of the emails:
- "koppers"
- "pollution"
- "violation"
- "independiente"
- "muckrock"
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Dillon Bergin
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Illinois Freedom of Information Act. request, copied below, and originally submitted on Jan. 23, 2024. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Village Of Stickney
In regards to your recent email pertaining to your Freedom of Information Act request. The due date of that request is January 30, 2024 due to the fact that January 15, 2024 was a legal holiday and therefore not a business day and pushing the five day response requirement out an extra day.
Thank you,
Audrey McAdams, Clerk
Chief Freedom of Information Officer
Village of Stickney
From: Village Of Stickney
Good Morning:
Attached you will find the response to your Freedom of Information Act request to the Village of Stickney.
Thank you,
Audrey McAdams, Clerk
Chief Freedom of Information Officer
Village of Stickney
From: Village Of Stickney
Good Morning:
Attached is the response to your Freedom of Information Act request to the Village of Stickney.
Thank you,
Audrey McAdams, Clerk
Chief Freedom of Information Officer
Village of Stickney
From: Dillon Bergin
Hi Audrey,
Pursuant to the relevant statute — ILCS 140/3 (g) — before invoking a denial of a request that is deemed "unduly burdensome," the agency must first give the requester an opportunity to narrow the request or, in the denial of the request, explain how the request will burden the agency's operation.
See: "Before invoking this exemption, the public body shall extend to the person making the request an opportunity to confer with it in an attempt to reduce the request to manageable proportions. If any public body responds to a categorical request by stating that compliance would unduly burden its operation and the conditions described above are met, it shall do so in writing, specifying the reasons why it would be unduly burdensome and the extent to which compliance will so burden the operations of the public body."
With the denial of my request, can you explain how this request is unduly burdensome? More specifically, what number of records must be searched and how long would a response with those records take to produce?
Best,
Dillon
From: Dillon Bergin
Hi Audrey,
I just wanted to be clear that, as you said in our phone conversation this morning, that the Village of Stickney will not demonstrate why compliance with the request would constitute an undue burden (either in the amount of records or cost of labor), beyond the statement in your written response that it would "an additional strain on the Village’s resources."
Best,
Dillon Bergin
From: Village Of Stickney
Please refer to my response. It is a statement that clearly demonstrates the exceptions to your request.
From: Dillon Bergin
Dear Leah Bartelt,
This is an appeal under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. My original request was sent to the Village of Stickney on January 23, 2024, and I received an acknowledgement of my request on January 29, 2024. I requested emails that contained five unique key-strings and were sent to or received by Stickney Mayor Jeff Walik, over the course of four months.
On January 30, 2024, I received a rejection of this request from the village. Along with the rejection, I received a document that contained the subject lines of nine emails that were responsive to my request. However, the village argued that a subsequent legal review of the emails imposed “an additional strain on the Village’s resources” and thus, they deemed providing the email themselves unduly burdensome.
I inquired both through email and over the phone to better understand why the content of nine emails were categorized as “unduly burdensome,” but the Village’s FOIA Officer, Audrey McAdams, reiterated only what was written in their rejection: that the request would be “an additional strain on the Village’s resources.” The Village of Stickney did not estimate the number of pages responsive to this request nor the time it would take to review and redact the records. Lastly, they did not contact me to narrow or reduce the requests before the rejection.
Pursuant to ILCS 140/3 (g), Public Bodies are required to take such steps, and this has been highlighted in decisions like Public Access Opinion 23-007 and 18-013.
I would like to note that the subject of the request relates to environmental violations and enforcement by local town and village governments — the topic of MuckRock and the Cicero Independiente’s recent reporting. These environmental violations affect the health of residents of Cicero and Stickney. We assert that the records are clearly in the public interest and this outweighs any limited burden on the public body in providing the emails we requested.
If you need to discuss this request, I can be reached at (267) 314-7952. Thank you for your consideration of this appeal.
My best,
Dillon Bergin
From:
Good day:
Attached to this message is correspondence from the Office of the Attorney General’s Public Access Bureau. If you have any questions, please contact me.
Very truly yours,
Victoria Frazier
she/her
Assistant Attorney General
Public Access Bureau
Office of the Attorney General
500 South Second Street
Springfield, Illinois 62701
(217) 782-9054
From:
Good afternoon, Mr. Bergin and Ms. Frazier:
Attached, please find a letter regarding your recent FOIA request to the Village of Stickney and documents related thereto.
Please be advised that in my response to Ms. Frazier, I misread the list developed by the Village's IT department as stating an email was received November 16. In reviewing the list again, it states "11-15" and an email received on that date is being provided, attached.
I apologize for my error in this matter.
The emails listed as having been sent or received on 11/29 are however, dated 11/28 in the body of said emails.
Thank you,
Jessica R. Fese, Esq.
Del Galdo Law Group, LLC
1441 S. Harlem Avenue
Berwyn, Illinois 60402
Office: 708-222-7000 ext. 259
Cell: 630-330-9721
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