Intergovernmental Agreements (Chicago Law Department)
| Multi Request | Intergovernmental Agreements |
| Submitted | June 30, 2019 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Matt Chapman
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:
A copy of all intergovernmental agreements.
An example of an intergovernmental agreement is: https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/dcd/tif/T_014_CTACentralLoopIGA.pdf
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,
Matt Chapman
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Illinois Freedom of Information Act. request, copied below, and originally submitted on June 30, 2019. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Chicago Law Department
July 9, 2019
Matt Chapman
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Chapman,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Department of Law, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request which was dated July 1, 2019 and received in our office on the same day. You requested:
Requesting a copy of all intergovernmental agreements.
Your request is unduly burdensome under Section 3(g) of FOIA. Section 3(g) of FOIA provides that "requests for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information."
In order to produce the records you seek, the Law Department would have to the search for all intergovernmental agreement ever going back in time to the founding of the City. This would involve searching multiple locations for these documents, and many of the intergovernmental agreement are stored off site at the Law Department's warehouses. The Law Department would have to search for these agreements manually as well because agreements from farther back in time are not organized by box number. Even for agreements entered into closer to the present, there are intergovernmental agreements in multiple divisions in the Law Department. Many of the more recent agreement are located off site at the warehouse, and the Law Department would need to recall boxes from our warehouse to search for these agreements. Because the request does not contain a timeframe, it is reasonable to expect that it would take scores of hours for the Law Department to find and produce all intergovernmental agreements in its possession.
It is necessary that your FOIA request be narrowed and clarified. If you would like assistance in narrowing your request, please contact me, and I will assist you. One reasonable way for you to narrow your FOIA request is to seek intergovernmental agreements from a narrower timeframe. Otherwise, for the reasons provided above, the Law Department is unable to respond to your FOIA request as currently drafted.
If you agree to narrow your request, you must submit a revised written request to my attention. The Law Department will take no further action or send you any further correspondence unless and until your current request is narrowed in writing. If we do not receive your narrowed request within fourteen calendar days of the date of this letter, your current request will be denied.
In the event that we do not receive a narrowed request and your current FOIA request is therefore denied, you have the right to have a denial reviewed by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706, (877) 299-3642. You also have the right to seek judicial review of your denial by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer - Department of Law
From: Matt Chapman
The records that I am seeking are those agreements that were created to satisfy the statutory requirements from (5 ILCS 220/) Intergovernmental Cooperation Act and other acts which include references to intergovernmental agreements, their creation, or maintenance. Of note, (5 ILCS 220/3.2). I am not sure how much further narrowing you'll need, as these are standard agreements throughout Illinois that should be readily available to maintain statutory requirements. Please reach out to the respective director, as defined by the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act.
Furthermore, the records responsive to this request will be used to build a greater public understanding of Chicago's decisions, policies, procedures, rules, standards, and other aspects of government activity that affect the conduct of government and the lives of any or all of the people. As such, I humbly ask that the unduly burdensome exemption be waived, as the public interest greatly outweighs the burden on the public body. Consider that the burden is placed on the public body to show that the burden on the public body is outweighted by the public's interest.
If absolutely necessary, I will accept all IGs from 2000 to the present date.
From: Chicago Law Department
July 19, 2019
Matt Chapman
Free Our Info
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Chapman,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Department of Law, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request which was dated July 11, 2019 and received in our offices on July 12, 2019. You requested:
Requesting all intergovernmental agreements from 2000 to the present date.
Your request is still unduly burdensome under Section 3(g) of FOIA. Section 3(g) of FOIA provides that "requests for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information."
As described in the response to your previous FOIA request, the Law Department has dozens of intergovernmental agreements for numerous projects even going back to 2000. The intergovernmental agreements are located within the Law Department's files for each project, and there is no central repository of intergovernmental agreements. Thus, the Law Department would need to pull numerous boxes from of warehouse and search through these boxes manually to find any responsive intergovernmental agreement. This would take dozens of hours of Law Department time and present a clear undue burden on the Law Department's time and resources.
Additionally, the statute you cite in your narrowed FOIA request does not appear relevant to this FOIA request. You claim that 5 ILCS 220/3.2 is of note to this request. However, that statute plainly states "[a]ny two or more municipalities, counties or combination thereof may, by intergovernmental agreement, establish a Municipal Joint Action Agency to provide for efficient and environmentally sound collection, transportation, processing, storage and disposal of municipal waste." 5 ILCS 220/3.2(a). The rest of the statute deals with how such as municipal waste Municipal Joint Action Agency should operate, and does not address how the Law Department or City of Chicago should maintain its intergovernmental agreements
It is necessary that your FOIA request be narrowed and clarified. If you would like assistance in narrowing your request, please contact me, and I will assist you. You can narrow your request by asking for a specific intergovernmental agreement you are interested in. Otherwise, for the reasons provided above, the Law Department is unable to respond to your FOIA request as currently drafted.
If you agree to narrow your request, you must submit a revised written request to my attention. The Law Department will take no further action or send you any further correspondence unless and until your current request is narrowed in writing. If we do not receive your narrowed request within fourteen calendar days of the date of this letter, your current request will be denied.
In the event that we do not receive a narrowed request and your current FOIA request is therefore denied, you have the right to have a denial reviewed by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706, (877) 299-3642. You also have the right to seek judicial review of your denial by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer - Department of Law
From: Matt Chapman
Fair, and thanks for pointing that out. I'll review that and figure out where my mention of 220/3.2 came from.
The Department of Planning and Development has reached out to me and has informed me that this information is already made available online at https://chicago.legistar.com. That said the extreme and systemic use of the unduly burdensome exemption for intergovernmental agreements gives me caution that the records pursuant to whether my requests are actually all available online. Ie, if an agency was uploading agreements online by default, then those agencies would already be aware that the records are online, and so the use of unduly burdensome would be nonsensical. It's also my understanding that all Chicago departments who received this request had a meeting with Chicago's law department to discuss how to handle this request.
This leaves me to believe three things:
1. No reasonable search was ever done (excepting for the Department of Planning and Development)
2. Chicago's Law Department quickly, and erroneously recommended to all of Chicago's departments to reject my request as being unduly burdensome without having done any reasonable research or searches prior to giving any advice.
3. Not all records are available online.
None of these are acceptable.
So, again, I ask that you please re-evaluate the use of the unduly burdensome exemption. Should you come to the conclusion (as most already have) that my request is not unduly burdensome, I kindly ask that you reach out to departments that your department has worked with and withdraw any advice to reject this request for being unduly burdensome. If nothing else, I would greatly appreciate some deeper clarification as to why this request has been deemed so difficult.
That all said, I am willing to narrow down my request to 2000 and on if necessary.
From: Chicago Law Department
August 12, 2019
Matt Chapman
Free Our Info
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Chapman,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Department of Law, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request which was dated August 5, 2019 and received in our offices on the same day. You requested:
Requesting all intergovernmental agreements from 2000 to the present date under the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act 5 ILCS 220/.
You mentioned in your email that the Department of Planning and Development directed you to the Clerk's website at https://chicago.legistar.com. This is because intergovernmental agreements under the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act require City Council approval before they are finalized. The intergovernmental agreements are attached to City Council ordinances. The Clerk's website is thus a repository of intergovernmental agreements because the intergovernmental agreements are attached to the ordinances approving the intergovernmental agreements. I was not aware of this fact when responding to your last FOIA request, but it is still a fact now that the intergovernmental agreements are maintained online. Under Section 8.5(a) of FOIA "a public body is not required to copy a public record that is published on the public body's website." The City of Chicago maintains intergovernmental agreements online at https://chicago.legistar.com. Thus, the Law Department has no obligation to produce records under Section 8.5(a) of FOIA that are already maintained online. To the extent the intergovernmental agreement are already online, the Law Department has no obligation to copy those records. If you are unable to reasonably access the records online, please re-submit your FOIA request explaining why you are unable to reasonably access the records online as detailed in Section 8.5(b) of FOIA. Otherwise, the Law Department has no obligation to copy the records you seek that are published online.
Regarding the Law Department's copies of the intergovernmental agreements, your request is still unduly burdensome under Section 3(g) of FOIA. Section 3(g) of FOIA provides that "requests for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information."
As described in the responses to your previous FOIA requests, the Law Department has dozens of intergovernmental agreements for numerous projects going back to 2000. The intergovernmental agreements are located within the Law Department's files for each project, and there is no central repository of intergovernmental agreements. Thus, the Law Department would need to pull numerous boxes from our warehouse and search through these boxes manually to find any responsive intergovernmental agreements. This would take dozens of hours of Law Department time and presents a clear undue burden on the Law Department's time and resources. There is little public interest in many of these agreements as well. Additionally, the Law Department, as legal counsel for the City, likely has copies of most if not all of the intergovernmental agreements from other City departments. This adds to the undue burden your request places on the Law Department because there are likely numerous intergovernmental agreements to search for and produce.
It is necessary that your FOIA request be narrowed and clarified. If you would like assistance in narrowing your request, please contact me, and I will assist you. You can narrow your request by asking for a specific intergovernmental agreement or agreements you are interested in. Otherwise, for the reasons provided above, the Law Department is unable to respond to your FOIA request as currently drafted.
If you agree to narrow your request, you must submit a revised written request to my attention. The Law Department will take no further action or send you any further correspondence unless and until your current request is narrowed in writing. If we do not receive your narrowed request within fourteen calendar days of the date of this letter, your current request will be denied.
In the event that we do not receive a narrowed request and your current FOIA request is therefore denied, you have the right to have a denial reviewed by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706, (877) 299-3642. You also have the right to seek judicial review of your denial by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer - Department of Law
From: Matt Chapman
Your response doesn't provide enough information to identify where a middle ground for narrowing is, so for now, please narrow this request down to 18 years worth of records. If 18 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 17 years worth of records. If 16 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 15 years worth of records. If 15 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 14 years worth of records. If 14 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 13 years worth of records. If 13 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 12 years worth of records. If 12 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 11 years worth of records. If 11 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 10 years worth of records.
This is in mind that it would be unreasonable for either of us to assume that all of the records pursuant to my request are online, as briefly highlighted in my last response.
From: Chicago Law Department
August 20, 2019
Matt Chapman
Free Our Info
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Chapman,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Department of Law, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request which was dated August 12, 2019 and received in our offices on August 13, 2019. You requested:
Requesting to narrow this request down to 18 years worth of records. If 18 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 17 years worth of records. If 16 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 15 years worth of records. If 15 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 14 years worth of records. If 14 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 13 years worth of records. If 13 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 12 years worth of records. If 12 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 11 years worth of records. If 11 years worth of records is too burdensome, then please only provide 10 years worth of records.
Initially, many of the intergovernmental agreement you seek are online at https://chicago.legistar.com. The intergovernmental agreements are attached to the ordinances where the City Council approves the intergovernmental agreement, and thus the intergovernmental agreement is online with the approving ordinance. Under Section 8.5(a) of FOIA "a public body is not required to copy a public record that is published on the public body's website." The City of Chicago maintains intergovernmental agreements online at https://chicago.legistar.com. Thus, the Law Department has no obligation to produce records under Section 8.5(a) of FOIA that are already maintained online. To the extent the intergovernmental agreement are already online, the Law Department has no obligation to copy those records. If you are unable to reasonably access the records online, please re-submit your FOIA request explaining why you are unable to reasonably access the records online as detailed in Section 8.5(b) of FOIA. Otherwise, the Law Department has no obligation to copy the records you seek that are published online.
Regarding the Law Department's copies of the intergovernmental agreements, your request is still unduly burdensome under Section 3(g) of FOIA. Section 3(g) of FOIA provides that "requests for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information."
As described numerous times in the responses to your previous FOIA requests, the Law Department has dozens of intergovernmental agreements for numerous projects even going back to 2009. The intergovernmental agreements are located within the Law Department's files for each project, and there is no central repository of intergovernmental agreements. Thus, the Law Department would need to pull numerous boxes from our warehouse and search through these boxes manually to find any responsive intergovernmental agreements. This would take dozens of hours of Law Department time and presents a clear undue burden on the Law Department's time and resources. There is little public interest in many of these agreements as well. Additionally, the Law Department, as legal counsel for the City, likely has copies of most if not all of the intergovernmental agreements from other City departments. This adds to the undue burden your request places on the Law Department because there are likely numerous intergovernmental agreements to search for and produce.
It is necessary that your FOIA request be narrowed and clarified. If you would like assistance in narrowing your request, please contact me, and I will assist you. You can narrow your request by asking for a specific intergovernmental agreement or agreements you are interested in or even multiple specific intergovernmental agreements. If you simply name a specific intergovernmental agreement or City project you are interested in, it will not be burdensome to pull those records and find that intergovernmental agreement (if one exists). Otherwise, for the reasons provided above, the Law Department is unable to respond to your FOIA request as currently drafted.
If you agree to narrow your request, you must submit a revised written request to my attention. The Law Department will take no further action or send you any further correspondence unless and until your current request is narrowed in writing. If we do not receive your narrowed request within fourteen calendar days of the date of this letter, your current request will be denied.
In the event that we do not receive a narrowed request and your current FOIA request is therefore denied, you have the right to have a denial reviewed by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706, (877) 299-3642. You also have the right to seek judicial review of your denial by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer - Department of Law
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