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Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS | Hacker News Reader

I can tell you that I worked at a local government many many years ago and purposefully delaying or charging a lot for open records requests the entity did not want to complete is absolutely something that was discussed and employed internally. Almost certainly there is malicious intent here, you are giving them too much benefit of doubt.

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It can be both, one situation to the next.

I'd say "failing to train or staff anyone to handle an important legal duty" still falls under malice, perhaps just slightly higher up the chain of command.

How about "failing to be rich enough to hire enough staff for all the FOIA requests that are made"?

"Rich enough"?

You can only make a FOIA request to the US government.

I should think it obvious that yes, every department should in fact be staffed to a level that allows them to comply with this (and all other) legal obligations. Doing otherwise is obviously malicious.

This law was passed last century, back in 1966. It's not like this is some surprising new obligation that they failed to staff against.

The federal Freedom of Information Act is limited in that way, but people very frequently use this term as a catchall for similar state laws. The source article is about a request made to a local police agency, not funded by the state, under Oregon open records laws; the parent comment is talking about a local school district that almost certainly fills the same dynamic and certainly wouldn’t be federal.

You are aware that, in the article, the Oregon Police are the ones charging a news outlet money, right?

Like, technically these requests cost nothing, because they pass the costs on - and because in this case, they've presented an absurd cost to avoid having to do anything at all

As is discussed in detail downthread, the presented cost is much less obviously absurd than the article makes it sound. Responding to the queries would require manual review and redaction of a gigantic number of documents, because the request was very broad in ways that make it nontrivial to automate. It might be better for the Eugene police to invest in some kind of record modernization that would let them handle such requests more efficiently, but I imagine the local townsfolk aren’t any more enthused than this local news outlet was by the prospect of paying for that.

I feel like local agencies, if they come up with something like this above a certain reasonable threshold should have to explain in exact detail on public record the procedure that’s taking so long or what is so expensive. After all, if it’s legitimate, they should have no problem doing that, right? If it’s hard, open your books and show us why

> Almost certainly there is malicious intent here, you are giving them too much benefit of doubt.

It's equally as certain (not very certain) you're attributing malicious intent where there is none. They're both real possibilities.

> They're both real possibilities.

Of course, but the fact that there are two possibilities does not mean that they are equally probable. The GP "worked at a local government" and they say that "delaying or charging a lot was [...] employed internally."

And the post they replied to said “Having been on the other side, the delay may not be a deliberate strategy.”

That moves the needle back towards “may not be deliberate”.

No, it merely raises a possibility. It does not prove any likelihood.

These are independent events someone saying something about something else does not influence the probabilty that something was malicous. The event already occured. I think the original person is just question the probability of something malicously being 100% to be flawed thinking/misattributed. :)

Sorry, groups of people don't get the same deference as individuals.

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