FOIA 25-133: The office certified the monthly count did not exist — then attached an annual one and offered to sell the underlying data for $2,815.20

Watchdog Alerts

Why isn’t this basic information available to the public?

1. The office certified that the “monthly summary” does not exist, and then in the next paragraph of the same letter attached a summary for the same year and called it responsive. The letter never explains why one summary exists and the other does not, and the Notice of Denial in that packet checks “All” denied when a document had in fact been produced.
2. The table that was attached is annual, not monthly, and counts referrals and screening decisions rather than “charges authorized.” The request asked for “each month” twice and said any table “that includes these counts by month” would do. The one thing the request was designed to reveal — the shape of the year — is the one thing the table cannot show.
3. Seven weeks later the office conceded the underlying data exists, offering “the underlying information that would allow for your requested statistical summaries or breakdowns to be calculated.” That is a different position from the July certificate, and the office never acknowledges the shift.
4. The bill is $2,815.20 for twenty-four numbers. Three-quarters of it — $2,111.40 — is redaction of names, dates of birth, addresses and identification numbers from 1,700 files that were only ever needed as counts. A count can be produced without a single name, as the office's own annual table proves.
5. The office priced 4 minutes per file across 1,700 files: 6,800 minutes, 113.33 hours, about fourteen eight-hour workdays. It then estimated 180 calendar days to deliver — roughly 128 working days, or nine times the labor it had just measured to the quarter hour.
6. The September 2, 2025 letter misstates its own dates, reciting that the 25-133 request was received on July 27, 2025 and responded to on July 7, 2025. That is a response twenty days before receipt, and neither date matches the July 17 letter in the same file set.

Timing caveat. ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June 2024, and this request covers calendar year 2024, so five months of the request predate the system. This page does not fault the office for being unable to produce a system-generated monthly report for January through May 2024. The criticism is that the office answered all twelve months with a single certificate, never said which months it could report on, never offered the seven months after go-live, and later priced a manual search of 1,700 files without explaining why the same system that produced the annual table could not produce a monthly one.

On Friday, June 27, 2025, at 8:46 in the morning, a two-page fax reached the Delta County Prosecutor's Office. It asked for a monthly count: for each month of calendar year 2024, how many felony charges were authorized and how many misdemeanor charges were authorized. It did not ask for a case file. It did not ask for a defendant's name. It asked for twenty-four numbers, and it said plainly that whatever the office already had would do — “a table, spreadsheet, or internal report that includes these counts by month is acceptable to satisfy this request.”

The office answered on July 17, 2025, and the answer had two halves that do not fit together. The first half denied the request: the “monthly summary” does not exist, certified in writing after a search. The second half, three sentences later, attached a summary. “A summary of the total ‘screening decision for referrals between 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024’ that was previously created is attached in response to your request.”

That attachment, the “21st Century Report,” is a single annual table. It is not monthly. It counts referrals and screening decisions, not “charges authorized.” And it is the only page of substance the office produced in the first round.

Then, on September 2, 2025, the office wrote again. It said it was “willing to provide the underlying information that would allow for your requested statistical summaries or breakdowns to be calculated” — a sentence that concedes the underlying data exists — and it priced the work at $2,815.20, demanded a $1,407.60 deposit, and estimated it would take 180 days to deliver. This page is about that sequence: a denial, an attachment that partly contradicts the denial, and then an offer to sell the data behind the thing that was said not to exist.

Summary

FOIA 25-133 is the file in this archive where the office's two habits meet. One habit is to answer a request for a number with a certificate of nonexistence. The other is to answer a request for a number with an itemized bill. Here it did both, in the same request, seven weeks apart.

The first answer, on July 17, 2025, was a full denial on a certificate of nonexistence. The Notice of Denial from that date checks “All” denied and reason box 2, “Record Does Not Exist.” It does not check the exemption box. It does not check the redaction box. It does not describe any separated material. It names no fee.

The second answer, on September 2, 2025, was a partial denial with a price. The supplemental Notice of Denial checks “Part” and reason box 3, “Redaction,” citing MCL 15.243(1)(a) — the privacy exemption — and describing the material to be separated as “victim names/contact information, dates of birth, names, phone numbers, addresses, criminal identification numbers.” The accompanying itemization charges $703.80 to locate records and $2,111.40 to redact them, for a subtotal of $2,815.20 and a 50% deposit of $1,407.60.

Six numbers describe the file. One annual table produced. Zero monthly breakdowns produced. 1,700 files the office says it must open. 113.33 hours of labor it says that will take. 180 days it says delivery will require. And $0 paid, because the requester has not, on this record, sent the deposit.

The contradiction that matters is not the fee. Fees are lawful, and this office itemizes them more carefully than most. The contradiction is the sentence in the middle of the July 17 letter. A public body that certifies a record does not exist, and then attaches a version of that record, has told the requester something about its own filing system that it never explains. Either a summary existed and the certificate was wrong, or the summary did not exist and the attachment is not the summary. The letter does not choose.

What was requested

The request is dated June 26, 2025, captioned as a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, and addressed to the FOIA Coordinator at 310 Ludington Street, Escanaba. The county's fax platform logged it at 6.27.2025 08:46:22 AM Eastern, two pages, sent to the office's fax line at 906-789-5197. The originating number and the fax machine identifier are redacted on this site.

The operative paragraph asks for one thing in two cuts:

“A monthly summary covering the period from January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024, showing: The total number of felony charges authorized each month; The total number of misdemeanor charges authorized each month. A table, spreadsheet, or internal report that includes these counts by month is acceptable to satisfy this request.”

Five features of the request shape everything that follows.

It asked for a monthly series, not an annual total. The words “each month” appear twice. A twelve-row table with two numeric columns would have satisfied it completely. The annual figure the office eventually produced is a different object: it collapses twelve months into one row and cannot show whether charging rose, fell, or held steady across the year.

It asked for charges authorized, not referrals received. Those are different stages of the same pipeline. A referral is what a police agency sends over. A charge authorization is what the prosecutor decides to file. The gap between them is the screening decision, and the screening decision is precisely what the public has an interest in seeing. The request asked for the output; the office produced a table of the throughput.

It named the acceptable formats and offered to take whatever existed. “A table, spreadsheet, or internal report” — the request was not demanding a bespoke document. It was asking the office to hand over a report if one was already sitting there.

It set a fifty-dollar ceiling and asked for an estimate first. “If the cost to process this request will exceed $50, please provide a written, itemized estimate in advance, per MCL 15.234.” That sentence is the hinge of this file. It is the reason the September 2 letter exists, and it is the reason the $2,815.20 figure is in the record at all.

It invoked segregation and the clock. The request cites MCL 15.244 and asks that any exempt material be redacted rather than withheld wholesale, and it cites MCL 15.235 for the response deadline. The requester anticipated the privacy objection and asked the office to redact around it. The office's September 2 letter is, in substance, an answer to that sentence — seven weeks late and $2,815.20 long.

The paper trail

Figure 1 · Seven dates, and one of them cannot be true

Select any date to read what happened and which clock it started or stopped.

Jun 26, 2025 Request dated Jun 27, 2025 Request faxed Jul 2025 Extension taken Jul 17, 2025 Denied in full Aug 2, 2025 Second request Sep 2, 2025 Priced at $2,815.20 Oct 17, 2025 Fee window closes

The denial and the attachment

The July 17, 2025 letter is two pages. Page one acknowledges the request, recites the two-part question, and then says this:

“Your requests are denied as the a ‘monthly summary’ as requested does not exist. The undersigned hereby certifies that, after a search for records and to the best of the undersigned's knowledge and belief, the public records requested do not exist within the records of the public body under the name nor any other name reasonably known to the public body.”

That is a certificate of nonexistence, the form contemplated by MCL 15.235(5)(b). Standing alone it is a lawful and complete answer. A prosecutor's office is not obliged to maintain a monthly charging tally, and if no such tally exists, the certificate is the honest reply.

The next paragraph is the problem:

“A summary of the total ‘screening decision for referrals between 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024’ that was previously created is attached in response to your request.”

Read those two paragraphs together and the office has said: the summary you asked for does not exist, and here is a summary. The letter never reconciles them. It does not say “a monthly summary does not exist, but an annual summary does.” That would have been accurate, and it would have been useful. It says the record does not exist, and then it produces a record.

There is a charitable reading, and this page will state it because it is probably the office's own: the certificate refers to the monthly summary, and the attachment is a different record — an annual screening report that happens to be adjacent to what was asked. On that reading nothing is dishonest; the letter is simply compressed.

But compression has costs, and the costs here are specific. The Notice of Denial that accompanies the letter checks “All” denied. It does not check “Part.” A requester reading the form alone would conclude that nothing at all was produced. A requester reading the letter would see an attachment. The two documents in the same packet describe different outcomes, and the form — the document the statute actually regulates — is the one that is wrong.

The consequence is not academic. Under MCL 15.235(5)(d) the notice must tell the requester of the right to appeal a denial, and under MCL 15.240(1)(a) the appeal goes to the head of the public body. A requester told that everything was denied, when in fact one document was produced, has been given an inaccurate description of the determination he is being invited to appeal. The appeal he files will argue about the whole request, including the part that was answered.

The table that was attached

The attachment is a one-page report titled “21st Century Report,” subtitled “Timeframe Examined: 1/1/2024 through 12/31/2024.” Its single table is captioned “Table 1. Screening decision for referrals received between” the two dates. It has five columns and eleven rows of data plus a total.

The table's internal arithmetic is sound, and that is worth saying before criticizing it. The adult sub-rows sum to 1,289 (307 + 17 + 849 + 16). The juvenile sub-rows sum to 119 (31 + 1 + 67 + 20). The two subtotals sum to the 1,408 total. Each column totals correctly: 6 under review, 309 declined, 1,093 charged. Each row is internally consistent, so that 307 referrals in the adult felony row produce 1 under review, 99 declined, and 307 charged — 407 accounted for against 307 received, which is possible only if some referrals were charged without being counted as referrals in the same period. That is a real feature of how referrals and charges move through time, not an error.

Three things are wrong with the table as an answer, and none of them is arithmetic.

It is annual, not monthly. The request asked for “each month” twice and offered to accept any table “that includes these counts by month.” The table has no month column. It cannot show whether felony authorizations were steady through 2024 or spiked in one quarter. The one thing the request was designed to reveal — the shape of the year — is the one thing the table cannot show.

It counts referrals, not charges authorized. The column headed “Charged” is the closest thing to the request, and it is not the same measure. A referral is an incoming case; a charge authorization is an outgoing decision. The table reports both, which is more informative than either alone — but the office never says which column it considers responsive, or why it chose to answer a question about authorizations with a table about referrals.

It answers a question about charges with a table that includes declinations. That is not a defect; it is the most useful thing in the file. The 309 declinations and 6 cases still under review are the part of the screening decision the public has the strongest interest in, and the office produced them without being asked. A table showing that 297 adult referrals were declined in a year is a genuine disclosure. It is simply not the disclosure the request sought, and the letter does not acknowledge the substitution.

The $2,815.20

The September 2, 2025 supplemental letter is captioned to two requests, #25-133 and #25-175. Its substance is a single concession and a single price.

The concession: “In the interest of cooperation, our office is willing to provide the underlying information that would allow for your requested statistical summaries or breakdowns to be calculated, subject to any statutory exemptions.” That sentence is the most important one in the file. In July the office certified that the records requested do not exist. In September it offered the underlying information from which the requested summary could be calculated. Both statements can be true at once — a summary can be absent while the records behind it are present — but the office never says so, and the shift in position is never explained.

The price is on an attached “Detailed Cost Itemization,” dated 09/02/2025 and prepared for “Request No.: 25-133, 25-175.” It has five numbered lines. Three of them are zero.

Figure 2 · Where the $2,815.20 comes from

Four bars, one itemization. Redaction is three-quarters of the bill.

Read the itemization as a table

Line	Description	Amount
1	Labor cost to locate — about 1,700 files, about 1 minute each, 113.33 quarter-hour increments at $6.21	$703.80
2	Copying and duplication	$0.00
3a	Employee labor cost for redacting — about 1,700 files, about 3 minutes each, 5,100 minutes, 340 increments at $6.21	$2,111.40
3b	Contract labor for redaction	$0.00
4	Copying and duplication of the redacted set	$0.00
5	Mailing	$0.00
Subtotal of fees		$2,815.20
Deposit required (50%)		$1,407.60

The mechanics of the itemization are, on their face, compliant with MCL 15.234(2), which requires that a fee be itemized and that labor be charged at an hourly wage plus up to 50% for fringe benefits. The office states the wage, states the fringe multiplier, states the per-increment charge, and states the number of increments. Compared to a lump-sum demand, this is a good-faith document, and it is the third such itemization in this archive.

What the itemization does not do is explain the two judgments that produce almost all of the money.

The first judgment is that 1,700 files must be opened. The form says the work “will require the opening of approximately 1700 files to determine if authorized or not.” That is a search for charge authorizations across a year's referrals. But the office had already produced an annual table of screening decisions in July, from a system, without charging anything. The September itemization does not say why the annual table could be generated from the case management system but a monthly one cannot, or why the monthly version requires opening files by hand rather than querying the same system.

The second judgment is that 3 minutes per file of redaction is necessary. That is line 3a, and it is 75% of the bill. The form explains it as redacting “personal information to include defendant names and other personal identifying information as an unwarranted invasion of the person's privacy MCL 15.243(1).” The supplemental Notice of Denial describes the separated material in more detail: “victim names/contact information, dates of birth, names, phone numbers, addresses, criminal identification numbers.”

Here the file runs into a problem of its own making. The request asked for counts. A count of charge authorizations by month can be produced from a case management system without printing a single name, a single date of birth, or a single address. If the office's position is that the only way to derive the count is to open 1,700 files, then the redaction cost is a consequence of the method, not of the request. And if the method is the office's choice, then charging the requester $2,111.40 for the privacy consequences of that choice is a decision the office made, not a cost the request imposed.

MCL 15.244 requires that exempt material be separated and the remainder disclosed. It does not require that separation be billed at three minutes a file when the responsive information is a number. MCL 15.233(4) relieves a public body of any duty to compile a summary — but the office did not rely on that provision. It relied on privacy, and privacy does not attach to a count.

113 hours of work, 180 days of waiting

The two numbers the office put in the same letter do not sit comfortably together.

Line 1 prices 1,700 files at about one minute each to locate. Line 3a prices the same 1,700 files at about three minutes each to redact. Four minutes a file, times 1,700 files, is 6,800 minutes, which is 113.33 hours. That is the labor the office says the job requires, and it is the labor it is charging for: 113.33 quarter-hour increments on line 1, 340 on line 3a.

Then the letter says: “The public body estimates it will take approximately 180 days from receipt of the deposit to provide you with the responsive, nonexempt public records.”

One hundred and thirteen hours is roughly fourteen eight-hour workdays. One hundred and eighty calendar days is roughly 128 working days. The office is describing a job it can measure to the quarter hour, and then asking for nine times the working time that measurement implies.

Figure 3 · The work and the wait, in the same units

The labor is measured to the quarter hour. The delivery estimate is not measured to anything.

Read the comparison as a table

Measure	Value	Basis
Minutes of labor priced	6,800	1,700 files × (1 + 3) minutes
Hours of labor priced	113.33	6,800 ÷ 60; matches 113.33 + 340 quarter-hour increments
Eight-hour workdays of labor	14.2	113.33 ÷ 8
Calendar days promised for delivery	180	September 2, 2025 letter
Approximate working days in that period	128	180 calendar days, five days a week
Ratio of promised wait to priced labor	about 9×	128 ÷ 14.2

There is a lawful explanation for part of this gap. A small office has other work. A 113-hour job spread across staff who are also prosecuting cases can legitimately take months, and MCL 15.235(2) contemplates extensions for exactly that reason. But the statute's extension is ten business days, not one hundred and eighty calendar days, and the letter does not describe a queue, a schedule, a start date, or any milestone. It states a number and moves on.

The practical effect of a 180-day estimate combined with a 50% deposit is worth stating plainly, because it is the part a requester feels. MCL 15.234(14) treats a request as abandoned if the required deposit is not received within 45 days, unless the requester has appealed the fee. MCL 15.240a(1)(b) gives a requester 45 days to bring a civil action challenging a fee. So the requester faces a 45-day decision window on a $1,407.60 payment for records the office says will arrive in 180 days. Pay, and wait six months with no enforceable schedule. Decline, and the request is abandoned. Appeal the fee, and the 45-day abandonment clock stops while a much slower process begins.

That is not a criticism of the arithmetic. It is a description of the structure, and the structure is the same in FOIA 26-22, where the office estimated 270 days, and in FOIA 25-129, where it estimated 90 days. Three requests, three long clocks, three deposits.

Where this file sits among the others

FOIA 25-133 is the fifth request in this archive for a computed figure, and the first in which the office both certified that the figure did not exist and attached a partial version of it and offered to sell the data behind it. Set beside its siblings, the pattern is not that the office refuses statistics. It is that the office has a repertoire, and the choice within the repertoire is not explained.

Two comparisons inside that table are worth pulling out.

25-136 and 25-133 are the same request in different clothes. Both ask for a 2024 count of charging activity, both were faxed to the same office in the same summer, both were answered with a certificate of nonexistence. 25-136 was answered with nothing at all: no fee, no table, no inspection. 25-133 was answered with an annual table and then a $2,815.20 bill. If the office's position is that counts of 2024 charging activity are not compilable, both answers are consistent with that position. If the position is that the underlying data can be assembled for a price, then 25-136 should have carried a price too, and it did not. The difference between the two files is not explained by anything in either one.

26-22 and 25-133 price the same kind of work differently. In 26-22 the office counted roughly 3,300 files at 4 minutes each and estimated 270 days. In 25-133 it counted roughly 1,700 files at 4 minutes each and estimated 180 days. The per-file time is identical, which suggests a standard the office applies. The file counts differ by a factor of two, which suggests a search scoped to the request. But 26-22's quote is $9,548 and 25-133's is $2,815.20 — a ratio of 3.4 to 1 for a ratio of 1.9 to 1 in files. The difference is that 26-22's itemization includes copying and other lines that 25-133's does not. The office never reconciles the two, and a reader comparing them has to do the arithmetic alone.

The June 2024 line

Documented: the request covers January 1 through December 31, 2024. ProsecutorByKarpel, the office's case management system, went live in June 2024.

That fact matters here more than in any other file in this archive, because it splits the request in two.

For July through December 2024, the office was running a system that records charging decisions. A monthly count of authorizations for those six months is, in principle, a query. The office's own annual table — produced in July 2025 without a fee — shows that the system can report screening decisions by severity for the year. Whether it can report them by month is a question the record does not answer, but the burden of explaining why not falls on the office, and the office has not explained.

For January through May 2024, the office was not yet running that system. Any monthly count for those five months would have to be assembled from whatever came before — paper files, an older system, court records. This page does not fault the office for being unable to produce a system-generated monthly report for a period that predates the system. It could not have existed in the form the request envisioned.

That is why the certificate of nonexistence is not, by itself, indefensible. For five of the twelve months, a monthly summary genuinely could not have been generated by the system. For seven of them, the question is open. A response that said “we can report July through December; January through May would have to be assembled and here is what that would cost” would have been accurate, useful, and lawful. The office instead certified the whole year absent, attached an annual table, and later offered to sell the underlying data. None of those three steps distinguishes the seven months from the five.

The appeal

Status: denial upheld. The requester appealed, and the Board of Commissioners upheld the denial. Chair John Malnar’s letter of August 20, 2025 records receipt of the appeal on August 5, 2025 and the determination at a special meeting on August 18, 2025. Its stated reason is a single sentence: the coordinator determined the records “were deemed to not exist.”

What the letter does not address is the substance of this request. It does not mention the annual screening table that the office produced with the same response. It does not mention the monthly counts that were withheld, the $2,815.20 estimate, or the $1,407.60 deposit. It does not say whether the Board considered the argument that a record cannot simultaneously not exist and be available for $2,815.20. It records no vote count and cites no agenda item.

Timing: the tenth business day after August 5, 2025 was August 19, 2025, so the determination fell inside the period. The written notice is dated August 20 — one day after the deadline. The same one-day pattern appears in the four companion letters issued that day.

What the packets do contain is two separate invitations to appeal, and they are not the same invitation.

The July 17, 2025 letter explains the right to appeal the denial to the chairperson of the Delta County Board of Commissioners or to seek judicial review in the Delta County Circuit Court, and encloses a blank FOIA Appeal Form and two pages of MCL 15.240. That is the appeal route for a denial under MCL 15.240(1)(a). A civil action to compel disclosure had to be brought within 180 days after the final determination, which ran to approximately January 13, 2026.

The September 2, 2025 letter repeats the same paragraph and encloses the same form and the same two pages of statute. But the September 2 determination is a fee determination as much as a denial, and a fee challenge runs on a different clock: MCL 15.240a(1)(b) allows a civil action within 45 days, which from September 2, 2025 ran to approximately October 17, 2025. MCL 15.240a(8) treats a deposit as a fee for that purpose.

So the September 2 letter told the requester he could appeal to the Board, and gave him the denial-appeal form, without telling him that the fee component of the same letter had a 45-day court deadline rather than a 180-day one. A requester who read the letter and filed a Board appeal about the $2,815.20 would have preserved the denial appeal and might have lost the fee action. That is a real asymmetry, and it is not disclosed anywhere in the packet.

The Board route itself is worth describing, because it is the only administrative remedy the statute provides. Under MCL 15.240(2) the head of the public body must act on a written appeal within 10 business days, with one possible 10-business-day extension. Under MCL 15.240(3), when the public body is a county board or commission, the appeal is not deemed received until its next regularly scheduled meeting — which can add weeks before the 10-day clock even starts. And under MCL 15.240(7), a court that finds a violation may award a $1,000 civil fine plus $1,000 in punitive damages, in addition to attorney fees and actual damages.

What the statute required, and what it did not

Documented: the request asked for a monthly compilation, offered to accept any existing table, set a $50 ceiling with an advance estimate, invoked segregation, and cited the response deadline.

The agency's position: no monthly summary exists; the annual screening table is the responsive record; the underlying data can be provided for $2,815.20 with a $1,407.60 deposit and a 180-day production window.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: three provisions do most of the work here, and they cut in different directions.

MCL 15.233(4) provides that the act “does not require a public body to make a compilation, summary, or report of information, except as required in section 11.” MCL 15.233(5) adds that the act does not require a public body “to create a new public record” except as required in section 11 and to the extent necessary to furnish copies or edited copies under section 14(1). Those two subsections are the office's strongest ground. If the monthly summary never existed, the office was not obliged to build one, and a certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.235(5)(b) was a lawful answer.

But MCL 15.233(4) excuses compilation; it does not excuse misdescription. A public body relying on it should say so — “no such compilation exists and we are not required to create one” — rather than certify that the public records requested do not exist. The difference matters because the certificate is a statement about the contents of the office's files, and the September 2 letter concedes that the underlying information is in those files.

MCL 15.232(i) defines a public record as a writing “prepared, owned, used, in the possession of, or retained by a public body in the performance of an official function, from the time it is created.” The 1,700 case files the office proposes to open are, on that definition, public records. The office does not dispute it. Its September 2 position is not that the records are exempt; it is that producing them requires redaction at $2,111.40 and location at $703.80.

MCL 15.244 requires that when a record contains exempt and nonexempt material, the exempt material be separated and the rest disclosed. The office invoked it correctly in form — the supplemental Notice of Denial describes the separated material — but the redaction it priced is redaction of names, dates of birth, addresses, and identification numbers from 1,700 files. The responsive information is a count. A count can be produced without any of that. The office's own annual table proves it: the 21st Century Report contains no names at all.

MCL 15.234(2) requires fee itemization at an hourly wage plus up to 50% for fringe, and the office's itemization meets that form. MCL 15.234(8) permits a deposit of up to one-half when the estimate exceeds $50, and the office demanded exactly one-half. MCL 15.234(13) treats a deposit as a fee, which is what makes MCL 15.240a available to challenge it. MCL 15.234(14) abandons a request if the deposit is not paid within 45 days absent a fee appeal.

MCL 15.235(2) allows five business days to respond plus one extension of not more than ten business days. The office's July 17 response came within the extended window measured from June 27 receipt. Its September 2 supplemental letter came seven weeks later, on no clock the statute describes. A supplemental response is not prohibited, but it is also not a substitute for a timely determination, and the fee it carries is the first fee the requester ever saw.

Open questions: whether the case management system can report monthly screening decisions; whether the 1,700-file estimate was derived from a query or an assumption; whether the 3-minute redaction estimate reflects the actual content of those files; and whether the annual table attached in July was generated from the same system the September letter says must be searched by hand. None of those questions is answered by either packet.

Authorities and sources

Show the statutes, cases, and sources cited on this page

• MCL 15.232(i) — definition of “public record.”
• MCL 15.232(m) — “written request” includes facsimile.
• MCL 15.233(4) — no duty to make a compilation, summary, or report, except as required in section 11.
• MCL 15.233(5) — no duty to create a new public record, except as required in section 11 and for copies or edited copies under section 14(1).
• MCL 15.234(2) — fee itemization; hourly wage and hours; fringe up to 50%.
• MCL 15.234(8) — deposit of up to one-half where the estimate exceeds $50.
• MCL 15.234(13) — a deposit is a fee.
• MCL 15.234(14) — request abandoned if the deposit is not received within 45 days absent a fee appeal.
• MCL 15.235(1) — a fax is received one business day after transmission.
• MCL 15.235(2) — five business days plus one extension of not more than ten business days.
• MCL 15.235(5)(b) — certificate of nonexistence.
• MCL 15.235(5)(c) — description of separated material.
• MCL 15.235(5)(d) — notice of the right to appeal.
• MCL 15.240(1)(a) — appeal to the head of the public body.
• MCL 15.240(1)(b) — civil action within 180 days.
• MCL 15.240(2) — head must act within 10 business days.
• MCL 15.240(3) — board or commission appeal deemed received at the next regularly scheduled meeting.
• MCL 15.240(7) — $1,000 civil fine and $1,000 punitive damages.
• MCL 15.240a(1)(b) — fee civil action within 45 days.
• MCL 15.240a(8) — “fee” includes a deposit.
• MCL 15.243(1)(a) — privacy exemption, discretionary.
• MCL 15.244 — duty to separate exempt from nonexempt material.
• Delta County Prosecutor's Office response letter dated July 17, 2025, FOIA 25-133.
• Delta County Prosecutor's Office Notice of Denial dated July 17, 2025, FOIA 25-133.
• “21st Century Report,” Table 1, timeframe examined 1/1/2024 through 12/31/2024.
• Delta County Prosecutor's Office Notice to Extend Response Time, estimated time frame 07/18/2025.
• Delta County Prosecutor's Office supplemental response letter dated September 2, 2025, FOIA 25-133 and 25-175.
• Detailed Cost Itemization dated 09/02/2025, prepared for Request No. 25-133, 25-175.
• Delta County Prosecutor's Office supplemental Notice of Denial dated 09/02/2025, Request No. 25-175, 133.

What comes next

Three things follow from this file, in ascending order of usefulness.

1. A request that removes the compilation objection entirely. Ask for the case management system's existing monthly report, named by whatever the system calls it, for July through December 2024 — the six months after ProsecutorByKarpel went live. Do not ask for a summary. Ask for the report the system already produces, in whatever format it produces it. If no such report exists, ask for the query output that produced the annual table attached on July 17, 2025, since that table came from somewhere.

2. A fee appeal, if one is still open. The 45-day window under MCL 15.240a(1)(b) measured from September 2, 2025 closed on or about October 17, 2025, and the 180-day denial window under MCL 15.240(1)(b) closed on or about March 1, 2026. Both dates are in the past on the record as published here. What remains is a fresh request, or a challenge to a fresh determination — not a revival of this one.

3. A request for the search itself. The September 2 letter says the office must open approximately 1,700 files. That estimate came from somewhere: a query, a case list, a count of referrals, a staff estimate. Ask for any record documenting how the 1,700 figure and the 4-minutes-per-file assumption were derived. Those records concern the handling of a public records request, they contain no personal information about defendants, and there is no exemption that obviously covers them. If they exist, they will show whether the fee was calculated or estimated. If they do not, the certificate of nonexistence will have to say so — and this time the office will be certifying the absence of a record it created itself.

Documents

These are redacted copies prepared for publication. Requester names, home addresses, personal phone numbers, and email addresses have been removed. Unredacted originals are not hosted on the public web server.

Related FOIA requests

• FOIA 26-292 — FOIA 26-292: The office used the requester's own cost-saving clause to withdraw the request, then offered to grant it if he removed the clause (Granted in part, denied in part — no records produced; the office conceded the data exists and refused the aggregate on the ground that the requester's own scope limitation excluded it, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-291 — FOIA 26-291: The office answered a request for a privilege log with nine document titles — and cited a subsection of the FOIA that does not exist (Granted in part — a nine-row title-and-date table supplying two of the eleven requested fields, no count, and a citation to a subsection of MCL 15.243 that does not exist, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-290 — FOIA 26-290: The office refused the victim-services records because it says you already have them — from a packet that contained none (Refused — five paragraphs labelled “granted” but zero pages produced, on the authority of a prior production that contained no responsive documents; the sixth paragraph received no disposition, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-131 — FOIA 26-131: Twenty case files, priced at $82.66 before a single page is copied (Granted in part — release conditioned on a $41.33 deposit; no records produced yet, April 17, 2026)
• FOIA 26-35 — FOIA 26-35: The office counted 52 pleas in 85 minutes — eight days after saying the same kind of aggregate did not exist (Granted — 52 pleas reported from the District and Circuit Court dockets, no fee quoted, no exemption cited, no pages withheld; the count is over-inclusive by the office's own admission, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-34 — FOIA 26-34: The office denied a count of diversion cases by defining “diversion” down to a programme it does not run (Denied — certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1), Denial Form box 2 checked, on the ground that the only diversion programme in Delta County is juvenile diversion administered by the Probate Court; no exemption cited, no fee quoted, no waiver determination, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-33 — FOIA 26-33: Asked to count deferred prosecution agreements, the office certified the total nonexistent and priced the underlying data at $9,093.33 (Granted in part and denied in part — the aggregate record denied as requiring creation of a new record, with a certificate of nonexistence and Denial Form box 2 checked; the underlying data granted subject to a $9,093.33 estimate, a $4,546.66 deposit and a 270-day production estimate; public-interest fee waiver left undetermined, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-32 — FOIA 26-32: What the office's own memos say about the migration that broke its records — a 95-page production that answers its own denial (Granted in part, denied in part — five records produced across 95 pages, with only personal contact information redacted under MCL 15.243(1)(a); no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-31 — FOIA 26-31: Asked how many crime scenes a prosecutor attended, the office listed eight documents and denied them as duplicative (Denied in full — refused as a duplicative request under Densmore v Department of Corrections, on the ground that the eight listed records were already produced in response to FOIA 25-267; Denial Form box 1 checked with the section 13 subsection left blank; no aggregate figure supplied and no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-30 — FOIA 26-30: Eight documents, one number, and a Densmore refusal built on a premise the record does not fully support (Denied — no aggregate total produced; eight responsive documents identified but not reproduced under a Densmore prior-production rationale; no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-29 — FOIA 26-29: A count of inherited convictions the office could not locate — priced at $1,033.33 for the work of counting (No count produced — office could not locate a record; underlying data granted subject to segregation and priced at $1,033.33 with a $516.66 deposit, February 5, 2026)
• FOIA 26-28 — FOIA 26-28: A headcount of cases open when the prosecutor took office — denied, then priced at $1,653.33 on an 800-file baseline (Denied in part, granted in part — no record states the headcount, with a certificate of nonexistence; underlying data granted subject to segregation and priced at $1,653.33 with an $826.66 deposit, February 5, 2026)
• FOIA 26-22 — FOIA 26-22: A conviction rate the office says does not exist, priced at $9,548 (Denied — record does not exist; $9,548 quote for the underlying files, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 26-21 — FOIA 26-21: A count of convictions the office says does not exist — then a quiet amendment that changed the number behind the bill (Denied as a compilation — no count produced; fee of $9,548.00 quoted for underlying files; amended response revised the volume figure without explanation, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 26-20 — FOIA 26-20: The aggregate case total, and the records that would let you count it (Denied — record does not exist, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 25-279 — FOIA 25-279: The office granted the personnel and budget records on paper — then sent three invoices totaling $34,673.79 and none of the records (Granted in part on paper — dozens of records listed as enclosed and none enclosed; three cost itemizations totaling $34,673.79, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-278 — FOIA 25-278: The office says it never tracked plea bargaining — then bills $23,146.66 for a 4,000-file review it says is already covered by another invoice (Granted in part — 62 trials produced from the calendar; plea-offer data certified not to exist; a $23,146.66 estimate the office says is moot if the twin invoice is paid, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-277 — FOIA 25-277: No annual statistical report exists, the underlying data does, and the office prices it at $34,720 (Granted in part — no statistical report exists; the underlying data is granted at a $34,720 estimate built on a volume figure the office has never counted, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-257 — FOIA 25-257: Three certificates of nonexistence, then a $19,840 bill to rebuild the data by hand (Denied — three certificates of nonexistence, with a $19,840 estimate to rebuild the same data by hand, October 31, 2025)
• FOIA 25-254 — FOIA 25-254: Two certificates of nonexistence, two documents produced, and a $74,520 itemization copied from an earlier request (Granted in part, denied in part — two documents produced, two certificates of nonexistence, and a $74,520 estimate identical to FOIA 25-244's, October 31, 2025)
• FOIA 25-244 — FOIA 25-244: Ten service slips, thirteen policy manuals, and a $74,520 quote (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-241 — FOIA 25-241: The special-prosecutor petition the office filed, and the 2024 memo that says it did not need another one (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-240 — FOIA 25-240: Officer use-of-force referrals, and the $1,863 bill for the one part the office would search (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-239 — FOIA 25-239: The Brady/Giglio list and how the office tracks officer credibility (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-234 — FOIA 25-234: Four lab reports, two certificates, and 26.4 grams where the press said four ounces (Granted in part, October 1, 2025)
• FOIA 25-202 — FOIA 25-202: No RFP, no bid, no purchase order — and the emails that show how the system was picked (Granted in part, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-201 — FOIA 25-201: ProsecutorByKarpel contracts, invoices, and licensing (Granted in part, denied in part, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-200 — FOIA 25-200: The software the office runs on — seven systems named, one of them retired in June 2024 (Granted in full, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-197 — FOIA 25-197: A request for complaints against the office came back as the office's own civil-rights lawsuits (Granted in part, denied in part, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-196 — FOIA 25-196: Audits of the office, 2019 through 2024 — five county financial statements produced, two fiscal years missing (Granted in part — five annual county financial statements produced; fiscal years 2022 and 2024 absent from the release; no exemption cited and no certificate of nonexistence, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-195 — FOIA 25-195: Reports on the office's own work — four case-tracking reports produced, performance reviews certified nonexistent, county reports withheld as attorney-client (Granted in part and denied in part — ten documents produced; county reports withheld on attorney-client privilege; performance reviews certified nonexistent; $5,961.60 estimated, $2,980.80 deposit, 270 days, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-194 — FOIA 25-194: Every email and text the Prosecutor sent in 2024 — a $63,028.80 estimate on a request the requester offered to narrow (Granted in part and denied in part — exemptions cited; $63,028.80 estimated, $31,514.40 deposit required, 270 days, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-215 — FOIA 25-215: Three answers to one request — two certificates of nonexistence, a grant, and a $13,248 estimate (Granted in part, August 9, 2025)
• FOIA 25-180 — FOIA 25-180: Two boxes checked — the trial records both “already provided” and “do not exist” (Denied in full — certificate of nonexistence plus an exemption box checked; no fee, no pages produced, August 2, 2025)
• FOIA 25-139 — FOIA 25-139: Forfeitures in cases that ended without a conviction, certified not to exist — while the same office took an extension for the volume of records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-137 — FOIA 25-137: The average time from charge to disposition, certified not to exist — after a ten-day extension for “voluminous” records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-136 — FOIA 25-136: The plea-agreement count the office certified does not exist — after taking an extension for the volume of records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-135 — FOIA 25-135: The office denied the 2024 trial summary as a record that “does not exist” — then produced eight case files on the next page (Granted in part — 8 case files produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-134 — FOIA 25-134: The dismissed-case count the office certified does not exist — after taking an extension for the volume of records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-129 — FOIA 25-129: Arraignment-to-disposition times the office certified do not exist, then priced at $2,931.12 (Granted in part — two items denied as nonexistent; $2,931.12 quote on the third, June 26, 2025)
• FOIA 25-118 — FOIA 25-118: Final case outcomes for January and February 2025 (Fee estimate issued, June 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-94 — Prosecutor Case Outcome Statistics, 2021–2025 (Granted in Part, May 23, 2025)