At a recent meeting, Milford City Clerk Katrina White told Milford City Council that her office was overwhelmed with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in the past few weeks. According to White, her office had spent a lot of the month of June on the multiple requests coming in requesting information.
“We continue to work with the city manager on the fellow’s program to get an intern to come in and help the clerk’s office,” White said. “With the amount of FOIA requests coming in, we need a person to just work on that.”
White stated that there had been 65 FOIA requests over the year, although she did not clarify if that was since July 2024 or January 2025. Councilman Dan Marabello asked if that was 65 individuals or were the requests being made by various people. White explained that it was 65 requests, but that there were individuals who put in more than one request.
“A FOIA could ask for seven different things and that is how they have been coming in lately,” White said. “They have seven different things over multiple years and those take a considerable amount of time to go back and to pull data and put it together. It could be multiple emails over several years, so we may have to go through many emails.”
One request, according to White, required her office and the IT department to go through over 5,000 emails. Once they determine they have all the data, the clerk is required to go through to be sure that it is part of the request and is allowed to be shared with the public. This requires staff time not just for the clerk’s office, but also for other departments.
“We just had one related to the police department and we are working with them to get the data,” White said. “That just takes a lot of time.”
According to research, the cost to a municipality for each FOIA requests varies depending on how complicated the request may be. Using the pay scale for the Milford City Clerk and Deputy Clerk, a FOIA request that takes four hours to complete can cost the city as much as $168 for the clerk’s time and $116 for the deputy clerk alone, a total of almost $300 for just one request. This does not include salaries for other departments who must assist in compiling the request. Using this example, the 65 requests submitted have cost the city almost $20,000 in the clerk’s office alone.
Milford City Code does allow the city to charge for FOIA requests although there was no discussion about whether they have implemented charges related to the increase in FOIA requests recently.
The basic function of FOIA, which was established in 1967, was to provide public access to records from governmental agencies. Federal, state and municipal governments are required to disclose any information requested unless it falls under one of nine exemptions. These exemptions include:
- Information that is classified to protect national security
- Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency
- Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
- Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged
- Privileged communications within or between agencies, including those protected by the:
– Deliberative Process Privilege which are provided records were created less than 25 years before the date on which they were requested;
– Attorney-Work Product Privilege
– Attorney-Client Privilege - Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individuals’ personal privacy
- Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that”
– Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings
– Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication
– Could reasonably be expected to constitute an impartial adjudication
– Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source
– Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law
-Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual - Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions
- Geological information on wells
Information on Milford’s FOIA process can be found on the City of Milford website.
