Update on Park District’s “recurrent requester” claim under FOIA –

CLARK CO., IL. (ECWd) –

This is an update to a previous article (here) where Charity Murphy, the Executive Director of the Clark County Park District attempted to claim a FOIA requester was a “recurrent requester” – which could have given her 21 days to respond instead of the 5 days mandated by FOIA.

The claim failed. This was simply another step in her bitter attitude towards anyone that requests public records.

I knew she was placing the requester in that category in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, so I requested a copy of the requests that person had submitted for the past year.

Once again…to be classified as a recurrent requester, one must file:

Within the 12 months immediately preceding the request:
(i) a minimum of 50 requests for records,
(ii) a minimum of 15 requests for records within a 30-day period, or
(iii) a minimum of 7 requests for records within a 7-day period.

The response from the District was that this requester had only submitted 43 requests for records – actually less than that, but for the benefit of doubt we will accept the Park’s interpretation of FOIA in their tracking of number of requests.

Here are the results, provided by Charity herself: 43 within the past year consisting of: 1 of those in the previous 30 day period and none in the previous 7 day period. Clearly falling well within the law and should never have been labeled a recurrent requester.

Additionally, she counted one office visit as having generated 3 separate FOIA requests and also listed a rescinded request as a FOIA request – so the actual number is probably closer to 39 in the previous 12 months.

On a side note, Charity did say she miscounted the requests, therefore she should not have labeled that person as recurrent.