Removal of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Waterloo, IA)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Iowa Open Records Law (Code Chapter 22), I hereby request the following records:

All materials regarding the removal of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from classroom booksets, including (but not limited to) the initial parental complaint, the March 13th email ordering its removal, subsequent written discussion of this order, and copies of any applicable District Policies.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, and is not being made for commercial usage.

In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer that the request be 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 10 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

M. Alan Thomas II

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 17, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Mr. O'Brien,

You must excuse a slight delay on my end to likewise seek counsel regarding your costs.

Sincerely,
M. Alan Thomas II

Mr. O'Brien,

I am sure that your attorney has already informed you of this, but let me make sure that we are on the same page: Iowa's open records law requires that you charge no more than a "reasonable rate," defined as the hourly rate of the person performing the work. It has been held that, where you have multiple employees available and qualified to do the job, you must choose the cheapest option; a more expensive option does not represent your actual (necessary) costs. Indeed, choosing an unnecessarily expensive option would appear to be an attempt to impermissibly run up costs in order to constructively deny an open records request by making it unaffordable to pursue.

Given that context, this is my opinion of the rates which you have quoted: Your hourly rate, attorney fees, and total costs are all unreasonable both objectively and when compared to those of any other Iowa subdivision, agency, or office which I have examined.

I have seen hourly rates, where charged, of $15–$30/hr. It may be that the only person authorized to search the entire email system is paid such a high rate as you quote, but the reviewer/redactor need not be. Please inform me of the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee qualified to do this work and recalculate costs accordingly.

There is also no reason specific to my request for your attorney to be involved unless some of the responsive records include correspondence from your attorney which may be "related to litigation or [a] claim made by or against" Waterloo Schools. Again, your attorney's non-involvement in all other circumstances would be in keeping with practice elsewhere. In the event that correspondence from your attorney is returned by your search, it can be set aside and we can discuss cost minimization for those records at that time. In any other case, you should not be charging attorney fees. Please recalculate costs accordingly.

If you do not wish to take these steps and/or you still wish to charge unreasonable rates, I am entirely willing to file a formal complaint with the Iowa Public Information Board to compel compliance with the law.

Sincerely,
M. Alan Thomas II

While I'm not sure that I agree that you have no other staff members smart enough to notice signs of missing emails and request an additional search term and I might be able to convince the IPIB of the propriety of a different approach, in the interest of resolving this quickly I will accept your NTE estimate. (To shorten such arguments in the future, the Board may wish to adopt an official policy on how open records requests will be handled and what rates and costs will be charged.)

To expedite your search, allow me to note that "Absolutely True Diary" is a common abbreviation of the title, if you had not encountered it already. I would personally start with "True Diary" and see if that turned up any false positives; if not, it probably covers all but typos such as "True Dairy".

Please let me know if you will need any portion of this paid in advance.

To Whom It May Concern:

Please find enclosed a check for $167.28 to satisfy the fee associated with the attached public records request.

Thank you.