ALPENA — In 2018, more than 400 separate requests for public documents were filed with Northeast Michigan governments, according to documents provided to The News by area officials.

Municipalities in Alpena, Alcona, Montmorency, and Presque Isle counties received a combined 442 requests for documents through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act in 2018. Of those, 18 were rejected. The municipalities received a total of $1,407 in revenue from FOIA requests during that year, according to the records reviewed by The News.

The most expensive request, costing $79.62, was fulfilled by the Alpena County Board of Commissioners. That request was for copies of leases and contract agreements related to the Alpena airport.

Kevin Goldberg, legal counsel for the American Society of News Editors, said FOIA is a great way for the public to get involved.

“It’s not just a media or academic issue, it’s an everybody issue,” he said, adding that people should be able to hold municipalities accountable.

In Alpena County, money received when FOIA requests are fulfilled is classified as “miscellaneous revenue” in the budget of the department which fulfilled the request, according to county Clerk Bonnie Friedrichs. The revenue is intended to cover the expenses incurred in obtaining the needed records, such as staff time for finding, reviewing and, if necessary, redacting the records. The FOIA law allows governments to charge for that time.

The money paid by the requestor reimburses the department for the labor required to fulfill the request. Employees who spend hours handling a request might be required to work overtime to keep up with regular responsibilities, which means the county could end up losing money when handling a large FOIA request, officials said.

The highest number of requests in the Alpena area was received by the City of Alpena, which handled 139 requests, generating $713 for the city. The Alpena County Clerk’s Office only received one request during 2018. Friedrichs said her office doesn’t receive requests often because the many records she oversees are available either online, as in the case of election results, or, as with court documents, by requesting them in person at the clerk’s office.

The Alpena County Board of Commissioners, which received 37 FOIA requests in 2018, receives a regular flow of queries requiring employees in the clerk’s office to dig through thousands of documents to find the requested information, officials said. Officials consult with an attorney on some of the requests received by Commissioners Coordinator Tammy Bates to determine what can and cannot be released.

FOIA exempts certain information from disclosure to the public.

“We try to make information available to the public, except we have to safeguard what is not available,” Bates said. “It’s a job, sometimes, disseminating information.”

The Alpena County Sheriff’s Department received 25 FOIA requests, with two of those rejected because the sheriff’s department didn’t possess the needed information. The rejected requests were sent to another agency for fulfillment, according to Sheriff Steve Kieliszewski.

Most FOIA requests last year were only partially completed by the sheriff’s department because of the need for law enforcement to protect information from identity theft, Kieliszewski said. The department was not able to provide a total amount of revenue it received through FOIA requestss because the funds were placed into a miscellaneous account and not recorded separately.

Income from FOIA will be tracked more carefully in 2019, Kieliszewski said after questions from The News.

Smaller counties, in general, had fewer requests for information, according to the records reviewed by The News.

Montmorency and Alcona counties drew only a handful of FOIA requests, with the exception of the Alcona County Sheriff’s Department, which reported 120 requests made during the year. That number includes requests from insurance companies for traffic crash reports, leading to a higher-than-standard number of reported requests, officials there said.

Montmorency County received 12 FOIA requests last year, totaling $11.50 in revenue. The total gathered was a result of one request from an attorney who asked for a record of all tax-foreclosed real property within Montmorency County that had been offered or sold at tax auction in 2018.

Rogers City and Presque Isle County each received a fairly substantial number of requests during 2018. One $63.19 FOIA request in Presque Isle County made up the lion’s share of that county’s $148 in revenue from 35 requests.

Information was readily available from most entities, with the smaller counties and municipalities able to quickly identify their counts from 2018, despite often being staffed on a part-time basis. The City of Alpena and Alpena County, which had the largest amounts of data to collect, also provided numbers upon request.

Goldberg, of the American Society of News Editors, said it’s a common thing for smaller municipalities to have fewer people working to complete FOIA requests. Smaller municipalities see fewer requests, so fewer staff members are needed to provide the requested information, Goldberg reported.

All municipalities are wrestling with how to keep track of FOIA records, Goldberg said. He said determining what constitutes a public record has changed significantly in recent years, and it’s also a challenge for some governments to keep track of everything digitally.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12. Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com.