CTA Payroll

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:

a tabular export of all paychecks issued by the CTA that are stored in the current system of record. For example, if CTA began using its current payroll system in 2005, please include all paychecks issued since that point. Please include all available fields that would not require redaction, including but not limited to date, name, amount, position/job title, department, and pay grade.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Anthony Moser

Dear Ms Lowrance,

Thank you for your response.

I'd like to start by noting that because the CTA waited to respond until the legally permitted time period had passed, and then waited further until after an extension would also have passed, the claim of undue burden is no longer available to your department.

Additionally, it is not true that all of the records would have to be reviewed. The request, as filed, is for structured data; that means that unlike emails, where the content might be unpredictable and therefore require manual review, for this type of request, looking through a single record is effectively the same as looking at all of them, because each record has the same structure. That is to say, if the fields I have requested ( date, name, amount, position/job title, department, and pay grade) do not contain exempt information - and there is no exemption I am aware of that would apply - then there is no reason to believe they require review.

It is true that I have requested a large number of records, but that does not by itself constitute a burden (which, to reiterate, is a claim no longer available because of the missed deadlines). For reference, the Dept. of Finance for the city recently completed a similar request without issue, producing 18 million records as a tab delimited text file. You will, I imagine, require the assistance of your IT department; but I have every confidence that you will also be able to produce the responsive records.

Please feel free to contact me at 202.557.4806 if you have further questions.

Thank you,
Anthony Moser