Editor's note: This article was written in conjunction with the Michigan Press Association's Trott Foundation Fellowship Program. Lilly Kujawski was selected as a fellow for the program in 2025.
Boasting wide, bipartisan support from Michiganders, transparency in government runs on the behind-the-scenes, often invisible, work of public servants working for local municipalities.
The Freedom of Information Act, Michigan public records law meant to help inform citizens about how their government works, is an example of government transparency efforts in action.
First passed in 1976, the state law came into effect at a time when there was demand for more transparency in government, according to Gregory Plagens, professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University.
Before his career in higher education, Plagens worked as a journalist and later the communications director for a school district in South Carolina, where part of his job was processing FOIA requests.
Access to public information allows citizens to hold government accountable, understand how decisions are made, and participate meaningfully in democracy, he explained.
“Part of the desire for transparency is to promote the democratic process,” Plagens said. ”People can’t make informed decisions about elected leadership if they don’t understand what’s happening.”
Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act applies to local governments, school districts and state agencies, requiring them to release public records on request.
However, the law does not cover the Legislature or the governor’s office, leaving Lansing lawmakers largely exempt from the same transparency rules imposed on local officials, explained Barb Byrum, Ingham County Clerk and Democratic Secretary of State candidate.
“Michigan has some of the worst transparency laws in the country. I think it is high time that we respect the public’s access to information,” Byrum said.
Number of requests
In Ann Arbor, which has a population of more than 122,000 people, Chief Deputy Clerk Sarah Alanis manages the FOIA requests that the city receives.
Alanis said she’s seen an increase in requests over the last few years. In 2023, she received 640 requests, 740 in 2024, and 860 requests so far in 2025.
As the sole person responsible for fulfilling these requests and corresponding with the requestors, Alanis said an increase of 100 or more each year is significant.
When Alanis started her job in 2021, she spent a few hours of her day working on FOIA requests. Now, she spends half of her day on them, in addition to other responsibilities, such as administering elections, creating City Council agendas and meeting minutes, and working with the city’s 60 boards and commissions.
“A lot of people now know about FOIA, which is great. I’m very, very happy that people are understanding that this is a service that your government, at any level, is required to provide,” she said.
Nearby, in Milan, a town of just over 6,000 people, City Clerk Lavonna Wenzel receives between 50-60 FOIA requests per year. To her small office, that’s a significant amount of time and resources.
“I feel like I get a lot,” Wenzel said. “As soon as I get one or two off my desk, I get two or three more.”
State law dictates certain time constraints that the government has to adhere to in responding to requests, Byrum explained. Under Michigan’s FOIA, requestors must receive a response within five business days, either granting, denying or partially denying the request, or requesting an extension for up to 10 business days.
The size of a municipality can dictate the resources its FOIA officer has, Byrum said. Requestors can aid themselves and FOIA coordinators, and expedite the process, by making sure requests for information are specific and delivered to the correct person.
Request types
In Milan, most of the requests Wenzel receives deal with real estate. Political candidates sometimes use FOIA to request the city’s absentee voter list to send out campaign materials, she added.
In Ann Arbor, most requests are for records like building permits and fire reports, Alanis explained. If something particularly “hot button” happens in a City Council meeting, Alanis said she will see an influx of requests related to that topic, too.
Interest in requests for proposals, or RFPs, has seen an increase in popularity, Alanis said. She credits this to the rise in artificial intelligence use.
“There are a number of people that are just using AI to get a lot of data at once and using FOIA to do it,” Alanis said. “It is overwhelming the system a little bit.”
She mentioned one name in particular that appeared repeatedly in the requests she has received: Mark Zurada.
Zurada is the chief operating officer for Pinpoint Analytics in New Jersey, an AI company that focuses on public construction space. He confirmed that his company uses FOIA as a tool to request bid proposals from contractors on city projects across about 45,000 townships in the country.
Pinpoint Analytics uses the bid summaries combined with AI technology to predict the cost of projects, advising contractors on how to price their proposals to clients, Zurada said.
“I think we probably have the most powerful FOIA software in the country,” Zurada said.
The company submits no more than 2,000 daily requests, but at least 500 per day, Zurada said. He said the company is intentional with this range to avoid overburdening the government with excessive requests.
Anyone can submit a FOIA request, Plagens said, though the law is often used by journalists who use it to aid their reporting. FOIA is also used by insurance companies when property is damaged, such as a fire or accident report, Alanis said.
In many cities, police records are requested through their own police-managed system.
Sometimes, individuals use FOIA to divert time, attention and resources away from election administration, Byrum said.
Instead of voter lists and election data that Byrum’s office usually sees, she noticed an increase in more unusual requests, she said. Some of them were for proprietary information about the office’s computer program. Others were for information that would require the office to make a new report, which it is not required to do.
“Stuff like that, that takes more time, requires the lawyers to be involved,” Byrum said. “Those are not the typical FOIA requests, but we have seen an increase in those.”
Request fees
In Michigan, fees for FOIA requests are calculated based on the lowest wage of an employee capable of fulfilling the request.
Some documents are exempt from FOIA in Michigan or may require redaction of information, a process that can make fulfilling the request more time consuming. Some of these exemptions are personal information, information that would interfere with law enforcement proceedings if made public and certain trade secrets, according to the law.
Requestors may be charged a fee to receive the records they want, which is calculated using guidance written in the Michigan law. The fee is assessed based on the labor involved in finding the documents and the actual cost of delivering them.
In Ann Arbor, the city provides up to an hour to process a request at no charge, Alanis said.
Most of the requests Alanis processes bear no cost to the requestor. It’s for more time-consuming requests that deal with extensive data that she has to estimate a fee, such as collecting and redacting emails from over a long period of time. Alanis added that she is good at keeping the fees she does charge under $100.
One request, though, Alanis said, had a significant estimated fee: $1.5 million.
In 2020, a requestor asked to see every general election ballot cast in the city. Alanis confirmed with other clerks' offices around the state that her municipality was just one of many that this requestor was trying to collect.
“The highest (estimate) that I have personally given out was the $1.5 million,” she said.
Collecting and producing that kind of volume of records would take extensive time and labor, Alanis explained. The requestor declined to follow through when they saw the estimated cost of the request.
In Milan, the first 15 minutes of the time it takes to process a request are provided at no cost, Wenzel said. Most of the requests she processes take less than 15 minutes, but occasionally, a more extensive request or locating a very old record, such as one from the early 1900s, takes longer and requires a fee.
Most documents are public and therefore available to anyone who requests them, Plagens said.
“Whether people realize it’s there or not, I do think the importance of the law is that it makes clear that we are supposed to share and make open as much as we can,” Plagens said.
Transparency helps expose waste, corruption and abuse of power, builds public trust, and ensures officials act in the public interest rather than behind closed doors. If a document is public, Byrum said, citizens should have access to it.
“As a government official, I spend taxpayer dollars,” Byrum said. “And since I spend taxpayer dollars, the citizens should have access to public information.”
