Illustration for FOIA 25-194: A $63,028.80 quote on a request the requester offered to narrow
FOIA 25-194 · Granted in part and denied in part — exemptions cited; $63,028.80 estimated, $31,514.40 deposit required, 270 days

On Wednesday, August 13, 2025, at 8:54 in the morning, a two-page fax reached the Delta County Prosecutor's Office. It asked for every email, letter and text message to or from Prosecutor Lauren Wickman during calendar year 2024, in four categories: communications with law enforcement, with defense attorneys and other attorneys of record, with county commissioners or other elected officials about prosecutorial operations, policy or case status, and with the media. It was, by any measure, a large request. The person who sent it knew that, and said so — and then offered the office a way to make it small.

“If it would assist in narrowing this request,” the requester wrote, “I am willing to accept a log of communications first” — a line per message, showing date, sender, recipient and subject — “before reviewing the full content of responsive records.” That is a requester volunteering to take the cheap version first. A log is a spreadsheet. It is the kind of thing an office either already keeps or can generate from its mail server in an afternoon. It would have let the requester see what existed, narrow to what mattered, and come back for the specific messages that did.

On September 3, 2025, the office answered. It did not produce a log. It produced a four-page letter that calls the request both “denied” and “granted,” lists thirteen statutory exemptions, cites roughly 14,400 email conversations, 50 text message conversations and 1,700 case files, and quotes $63,028.80 — with a $31,514.40 deposit due before any work begins and an estimated 270 days to finish.

No correspondence was produced. No log was produced. The offer to narrow was never mentioned.

This page is about that gap: between a requester who asked for less and an office that priced the most.

How to read this page

Documented facts come from the released packet and are dated and quoted. The agency's position is what the office asserted or did. Legal interpretation is analysis of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act, labeled as such. Open questions are issues the record does not resolve. This page does not claim that the estimate was unlawful. Michigan's FOIA permits a public body to charge for the labor of searching, reviewing and separating records, and a request this broad is genuinely expensive to answer in full. What this page examines is narrower: whether the office engaged with the request it was actually sent — one that offered to start with a log — and whether the estimate it gave is a price for the request or a price for refusing it.

Summary

FOIA 25-194 asks the Delta County Prosecutor's Office to account for its own communications during 2024. Not its case files, not its defendants, not its deliberations — its correspondence. Who the Prosecutor talked to, in four categories the public has a legitimate interest in: the police who bring her cases, the defense attorneys who oppose them, the elected officials who fund her office, and the press that reports on all of it.

The request is careful in ways that matter. It names a fixed window, January 1 through December 31, 2024. It names four categories rather than asking for “all communications.” It asks for emails with their attachments and texts with their timestamps and sender and recipient identifiers. It asks for electronic delivery, with PDF preferred. It sets a $20 threshold and asks for an itemized estimate in advance if the cost would exceed it, under MCL 15.234. It asks the office to cite the specific statutory exemption and the name and title of the person responsible, under MCL 15.235(5). And it asks for all reasonably segregable non-exempt portions of anything withheld, under MCL 15.244.

Then it does the thing that should have changed the whole conversation: it offers to accept a log first.

Six numbers describe what came back. $63,028.80 estimated. $31,514.40 deposit. 270 days to complete. 13 exemptions cited. 0 pages of correspondence produced. And 0 mentions of the log the requester offered to accept.

There is a version of this file in which the office is simply overwhelmed. Fourteen thousand email conversations is not a small number, and an office of a few attorneys and a coordinator cannot review a year of a prosecutor's mail for free. A $63,028.80 estimate on work that size is not obviously wrong, and this page does not pretend it is. The problem is not the size of the number. The problem is that the number is attached to a request the requester had already offered to shrink, and the office never said why it declined the smaller version.

A log is the cheapest possible first step. It is also the step that would have told the requester — and the public — whether the volume is real. If the office had produced a log of 14,400 rows, the request would have been vindicated and the requester could have narrowed to the hundred messages that mattered. If the log had come back at 400 rows, the $63,028.80 estimate would have collapsed on its own. Either way, the public would have learned something. Instead it learned the price of not being told.

What was requested

The request is dated August 13, 2025, captioned as a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request for “Communications to/from Prosecutor Wickman (2024),” and addressed to the FOIA Coordinator at 310 Ludington Street, Escanaba. It was transmitted by fax at 8:54 a.m., and the county's own fax platform logged it that morning as two pages.

The operative paragraph asks for:

“All correspondence, including emails, letters, and text messages, to or from Prosecutor Lauren Wickman between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024, that involves: (1) communications with law enforcement agencies; (2) communications with defense attorneys or other attorneys of record in criminal matters; (3) communications with County Commissioners or other elected officials regarding prosecutorial operations, policy, or case status; (4) communications with members of the media.”

It then specifies the format of each: “For emails, please include attachments. For text messages, please include the content, date/time stamps, and sender/recipient identifiers.” And then the sentence that should have reframed everything:

“If it would assist in narrowing this request, I am willing to accept a log of communications (date, sender, recipient, subject) first, before reviewing the full content of responsive records.”

Four features of the request matter to how it should have been answered, and the office's response engages with none of them.

It offered a cheaper first step. The log offer is not a footnote. It is a requester saying: do not review 14,000 emails to find the ones I want; give me the index and I will tell you which ones I want. Any FOIA coordinator who has faced a large correspondence request knows this is the single most useful thing a requester can offer. It converts an unbounded review into a bounded one.

It named four categories, not “everything.” The request is not a fishing expedition through a prosecutor's entire inbox. It asks for communications with the police, with opposing counsel, with elected officials, and with the press — four groups whose interactions with a prosecutor's office are squarely within the public's interest. A log would have made the category boundaries visible and let the office withhold what fell outside them.

It asked for the exemption and the responsible person by name. “If any records are withheld or redacted, please cite the specific statutory exemption and the name and title of the person responsible for the denial, as required by MCL 15.235(5).” This is the provision that prevents an office from answering a request with a wall of statutory citations and no explanation of which one applies where. The office's response is a wall of statutory citations.

It set a twenty-dollar threshold and asked for an estimate first. “If the estimated cost exceeds $20, please provide an itemized estimate in advance.” The office did provide an itemization. That is one of the few things it did exactly as asked — and the itemization is where the file becomes interesting.

The paper trail

Figure 1 · Interactive

Twenty-one days from fax to a $63,028.80 estimate

Select any marker to read what happened that day and which document records it.

The request
The office

Select a marker on the timeline to read the detail.

Source: the August 13, 2025 request and its fax receipt; the Notice to Extend Response Time form; the September 3, 2025 response letter; the Detailed Cost Itemization dated 09/03/2025; and the Notice of Denial for Request No. 25-194, all produced or released in this record.

Figure 1. The request was received on August 14 and answered on September 3 — inside the extended statutory window. The dispute in this file is not about the clock. It is about what the office priced.

Two details are worth pausing on. The first is that the office dated its own receipt to the day after the fax, which is what MCL 15.235(1) requires for a faxed request. That is a small point in the office's favor, and it is noted here because accuracy cuts both ways: the response was timely, and this page does not allege otherwise.

The second is the extension form. It is in the packet, it checks reason box 1 — the “voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records” ground — and its contact is the FOIA coordinator. The handwritten dates on the form are not legible enough at any magnification to rely on, and this page does not assert them. What the form establishes is simply that the office invoked the volume extension, which is consistent with the volume figures in the response letter.

Where the $63,028.80 goes

The itemization is the most concrete document in the packet, and it is worth reading closely, because it is where the office's theory of the request becomes visible.

Figure 2 · Interactive

Two line items, one request, 1,440 hours

Select a bar to read what it counts. The same 2,880 increments are charged twice.

Hours to locate720
Hours to redact720
Exemptions cited13
Pages produced0

Source: the Detailed Cost Itemization for Request No. 25-194, dated 09/03/2025, verified against the page images at high resolution.

Figure 2. The itemization charges 720 hours to find the records and another 720 hours to redact them. The locate estimate and the redaction estimate are built on the same 2,880 increments.

Documented: The locate line is 43,200 minutes divided by fifteen, which is 2,880 fifteen-minute increments, at $6.21 per increment, for $17,870.40. The redaction line is 2,880 increments at $15.68 per increment, for $45,158.40. The two lines sum to $63,028.80, and the 50% deposit is $31,514.40. The estimated time frame is 270 days from receipt of the deposit. All of these figures are printed on the form and were verified against the page images.

The arithmetic is internally consistent, and this page does not allege that it is wrong. Two things about it are nonetheless worth naming, because they bear directly on the log offer.

First, the same 2,880 increments appear on both lines. The office estimates it will take 2,880 increments to locate the records and 2,880 increments to redact them. That is not an error — locating and redacting are different tasks — but it is a striking symmetry. It means the office's estimate assumes it will spend as much time deciding which records to pull as it will spend pulling them, and then the same amount again separating exempt from non-exempt. On a request where the requester offered to accept a log, the locate line is the line a log would have replaced.

Second, the redaction line is priced at a higher wage than the locate line. The locate line uses $6.21 per fifteen-minute increment, which corresponds to the wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of the search. The redaction line uses $15.68 per fifteen-minute increment, which corresponds to the wage of the person doing the redaction — roughly the attorney rate. That is consistent with how MCL 15.234 works: the search is charged at the lowest-paid capable employee's wage, and the review and separation at the wage of the person who actually does it. But it also means the redaction line, not the search, is where most of the money is. And redaction is exactly the work a log would have deferred.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234(1) permits a public body to charge a fee for the “cost of searching for, locating, and examining public records” and for “the cost of separating and deleting exempt information from non-exempt information,” computed at the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of performing the task, plus fringe benefits, in fifteen-minute increments. The itemization tracks that structure. Nothing in the form is facially improper. The question the form raises is not whether the office may charge for this work, but whether it was required to charge for all of it when the requester had offered a way to do less.

What was asked, and what came back

Figure 3 · Interactive

Ten things asked for, ten answers

Select a card to read what was requested and what the office did with it. Filter by outcome with the buttons.

Select a card
2 complied 1 partial 7 no answer given

Source: the August 13, 2025 request, the September 3, 2025 response letter, the Detailed Cost Itemization, and the Notice of Denial for Request No. 25-194.

Figure 3. The office did two things exactly as asked: it itemized the cost, and it answered on time. Everything else was disposed of with a categorical list and a price.

The scorecard makes the shape of the response visible. The office complied with the two procedural requests — the itemization and the clock — and disposed of the substantive ones with a list of exemptions and a price. That is efficient, and it may be lawful, and it is also the reason this file exists: a requester who asks ten things and receives a list and an invoice has no way to tell which of the ten the office actually considered.

The offer to narrow, and why it matters

The heart of this file is not the dollar figure. It is the sentence the office did not answer.

“If it would assist in narrowing this request, I am willing to accept a log of communications (date, sender, recipient, subject) first, before reviewing the full content of responsive records.”

That sentence is a requester doing the office's work for it. It says: I understand this is large; here is how to make it smaller. A log is not a legal opinion and it is not a case file. It is a table with four columns. For an office that keeps its mail in a system like Zimbra — and the fax receipts in this very packet show that it does — a log of a mailbox over a date range is a report, not a research project.

There are three honest answers the office could have given to that offer, and any of them would have been defensible.

It could have said yes. Produce the log, quote a fee for the log alone, and let the requester narrow from there. That is the answer the offer was designed to invite, and it is the answer that would have cost the office the least and told the public the most.

It could have said no, and explained why. “We decline to compile a log under MCL 15.233(4)” is a lawful answer. So is “a log would require the same review as the underlying records because our system does not index by category.” Either would have told the requester where he stood.

It could have priced the log separately. Even a high price for the log would have been information: it would have told the requester that the cheap path existed and what it cost.

The office did none of these. It quoted the full-document search and redaction — 1,440 hours of work — and never mentioned the log. The practical effect is that the requester was priced out of an answer he had already offered to make cheaper, and the public was told the price of everything and the content of nothing.

Open question: Did the office consider the log offer and reject it, or did it not register the offer at all? The letter gives no clue. If the offer was considered and rejected, the rejection should have been stated. If it was not considered, that is a processing failure, not a legal one — but it is the kind of failure that a written FOIA procedure is supposed to prevent.

Thirteen exemptions, and no map

The response letter lists thirteen statutory exemptions. In the order the letter presents them, they are: personal privacy under MCL 15.243(1)(a); attorney work product under MCL 15.243(1)(h), citing Messenger v Ingham County Prosecutor; attorney-client privilege under MCL 15.243(1)(g); the law-enforcement investigating-records exemptions at MCL 15.243(1)(b)(i) through (vi); custodial-institution security at MCL 15.243(1)(c); a statute-specific exemption at MCL 15.243(1)(d); medical and counseling records at MCL 15.243(1)(f); the law-enforcement records exemptions at MCL 15.243(1)(s)(i) through (x); security measures at MCL 15.243(1)(u); Social Security numbers at MCL 15.243(1)(w); and cybersecurity at MCL 15.243(1)(z).

That is a comprehensive list. It is also, as an answer to this request, a category error. The request asked for the office to “cite the specific statutory exemption” for each withholding and to name “the name and title of the person responsible for the denial.” A list of thirteen provisions does not tell the requester which provision covers which communication. It tells him that the office has a long list of reasons it might have had, without saying which reason it actually had for any particular record.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5) requires a public body that denies a request in whole or in part to “state the specific reasons for the denial” and to “identify the specific exemption or exemptions” relied on, along with the name and title of the person responsible. Courts have read that requirement as demanding more than a recitation of the statute: the point of naming the specific exemption is to let the requester understand, and if necessary challenge, the basis for the withholding. A list that names every applicable exemption in the Act does not perform that function. It is the FOIA equivalent of answering “why?” with “because of the law.”

This matters for the log offer, too. If the office had produced a log and withheld the underlying content under a named exemption, the requester could have seen the shape of what was withheld and challenged the specific withholdings that seemed wrong. With no log and a list of thirteen exemptions, there is nothing to challenge record by record. The only move left is to challenge the whole thing, which is expensive and slow.

The system, and the five months before it

ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June 2024. This request covers January 1 through December 31, 2024, so roughly five months of the requested period predate the system. That matters, and this page does not fault the office for how it stored correspondence before June 2024. An office that was not yet on a case-management system may well have had its mail in a different place, or in more than one place.

But the request did not ask for a case-management export. It asked for correspondence, and it offered to accept a log. Even an office with mail split between two systems could produce a log of what it has, with a note on which months are incomplete. The office said nothing about any of this. The response letter does not mention the system, does not say which months it could search, and does not say whether the pre-June-2024 correspondence is reachable at all.

That silence is the most concrete criticism available on this record, and it is the same criticism this site has made of earlier requests. It is not that the office refused to search. It is that the office did not tell the public what it searched, over what period, in what system, and with what result. A one-paragraph letter explaining that the office's mail system changed in June 2024 and that the first five months would require a separate manual review at a stated cost would have been a complete and honest answer. It would also have been a public record of the office's own transition — precisely the kind of fact this site exists to collect.

The pattern: price it, or certify it away

25-194 is the largest fee estimate in this archive after FOIA 25-244, and it belongs to a pattern that has become clear across the requests collected here. When the office is asked for a document it already has, it produces the document. When it is asked for something it would have to compile, search or review at scale, it either certifies that the thing does not exist or prices the work high enough that the request dies. The table below sets the largest estimates side by side.

Fee estimates across the archive, largest first
FOIAWhat was askedEstimate and deposit
25-244 Brady and Giglio service records, 2024–2025 $74,520 with a $37,260 deposit
25-194 All 2024 correspondence to or from the Prosecutor, in four categories, with a log offered first $63,028.80 with a $31,514.40 deposit, 270 days
26-22 Search of about 3,300 case files $9,548 with a $4,774 deposit
25-195 Reports and evaluations of the office's own work, 2023–2024 $5,961.60 with a $2,980.80 deposit, 270 days
25-129 Arraignment-to-disposition times, by case $2,931.12 with a $1,465.56 deposit
25-133 Annual and monthly screening and charging counts $2,815.20 with a $1,407.60 deposit

Read together, the rows describe a consistent posture. The largest estimates in the archive are attached to the requests that would reveal the most about how the office actually operates — its discipline records, its correspondence, its internal reports. The smaller estimates are attached to narrower requests. That is not proof of anything, and this page does not allege that the office set its fees to discourage disclosure. But it is a pattern the public can see, and it is the reason the log offer in 25-194 matters so much. A log would have converted a $63,028.80 request into a much smaller one, and the office did not take the opportunity.

The legal framework, in plain terms

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234 governs fees. It permits a public body to charge for the cost of searching, examining, reviewing and separating records, computed at the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of the work, plus fringe benefits, in fifteen-minute increments. It also permits a 50% deposit before the work begins, and it requires an itemized estimate on request. The itemization in this packet follows that structure and appears to comply with it. The statute does not, however, require a public body to charge for the most expensive version of a request when the requester has offered a cheaper one.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.233(4) is the provision the letter never uses. It allows a public body to decline to make a compilation, summary or report of information unless the request is for a record that already exists. A log of date, sender, recipient and subject is arguably a compilation — and if the office believed it was, MCL 15.233(4) was the honest way to say so. Instead the office said nothing about the log at all. That silence is not the same as a lawful refusal; it is the absence of an answer.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5) requires a public body that denies a request to state the specific reasons and identify the specific exemption or exemptions relied on, along with the name and title of the person responsible. The thirteen-exemption list in this letter does not identify which exemption applies to which record. Whether that satisfies the statute is a question a court would decide, but the purpose of the provision — to let the requester understand and challenge the basis for a withholding — is not served by a list that names every applicable exemption at once.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.244 requires a public body that withholds exempt material to separate and release the nonexempt portion. The office withheld everything and produced nothing. It also checked the “Redaction” box on the Notice of Denial, which implies it anticipated redacting some records — yet no redacted record was produced. The segregation duty is not satisfied by a statement that redaction might have been necessary.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.243(1)(h) exempts attorney work product, and Messenger v Ingham County Prosecutor, 232 Mich App 633 (1998), is the leading Michigan case on the scope of that exemption in a prosecutor's office. The case supports withholding material prepared in anticipation of litigation. It does not support withholding every communication a prosecutor has with a defense attorney, a police agency, an elected official or a reporter, and the letter does not explain why it would.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.240a provides a separate appeal route for a fee determination. Because the office quoted a fee rather than certifying nonexistence, the requester has a fee appeal available to him here — a route that was unavailable in the certificate-of-nonexistence cases in this archive. That is a meaningful difference, and it is the one structural advantage this record gives the requester.

Authorities and sources cited on this page

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

Michigan Freedom of Information Act, Public Act 442 of 1976, MCL 15.231 et seq., in particular MCL 15.233(4) (compilation and summary), MCL 15.234 (fees, estimates and deposits), MCL 15.235 (response deadlines, extensions and the specific-exemption requirement), MCL 15.240 (appeals and civil actions), MCL 15.240a (fee appeals), MCL 15.243(1) (exemptions, including subsections (a), (b), (c), (d), (f), (g), (h), (s), (u), (w) and (z)), and MCL 15.244 (segregation of exempt material).

Case law: Messenger v Ingham County Prosecutor, 232 Mich App 633 (1998), cited in the response letter for the scope of the attorney work-product exemption.

Documents relied on: the FOIA request dated August 13, 2025 and its fax receipt; the Notice to Extend Response Time form for Request No. 25-194; the response letter dated September 3, 2025; the Detailed Cost Itemization dated 09/03/2025; and the Notice of Denial for Request No. 25-194 dated 09/03/2025. All are reproduced, with requester identifiers removed, in the document list on this page.

Comparisons drawn from other records in this archive: FOIA 25-244 (Brady and Giglio service records, $74,520 estimate), FOIA 26-22 (case-file search, $9,548 estimate), FOIA 25-129 (arraignment-to-disposition times, $2,931.12 estimate), and FOIA 25-133 (annual screening data, $2,815.20 estimate).

What would move this forward

The productive next step is to take the office at its word and ask for the log alone, with a fee cap that makes the answer cheap. A request for “a log of all emails sent or received by Prosecutor Wickman between January 1 and December 31, 2024, showing date, sender, recipient and subject line, with no message content,” limited to the four categories, is a request for an existing system report. If the office produces it, the public gets the shape of the Prosecutor's correspondence for a fraction of $63,028.80. If the office refuses it, the refusal will have to be framed as a compilation under MCL 15.233(4) or a fee under MCL 15.234, and either of those is reviewable in a way that a categorical exemption list is not.

Two narrower requests would also be useful. The first asks for the office's mail-system configuration and retention documentation — what system holds the Prosecutor's email, whether it can be searched by sender and recipient, and how long messages are retained. That is a request for existing configuration records, and it would establish whether the volume figure in the letter is a property of the office's records or a property of its software. The second asks for the office's written FOIA procedures and any internal guidance on how large correspondence requests are handled — the document that would explain why a log offer went unanswered.

Both of those requests are catalogued in our internal working list, with the specific wording and the record that supports each one.

Bottom line

The Delta County Prosecutor's Office was asked for its 2024 correspondence in four categories, and the requester offered to accept a log of date, sender, recipient and subject first, precisely to make the request cheaper. The office never mentioned the offer. It quoted $63,028.80 — 720 hours to locate and another 720 hours to redact — demanded a $31,514.40 deposit, estimated 270 days, listed thirteen exemptions, and produced no correspondence at all. The estimate appears to comply with MCL 15.234, and the response was timely. But the office did not answer the one question that would have made the request possible: whether it would produce the log. The result is a public record that prices a request the requester had already offered to shrink, and leaves the public with a number instead of a message.

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.

FOIA Request (redacted) The four-page request faxed on August 13, 2025 asking for all 2024 correspondence to or from Prosecutor Wickman in four categories, with the offer to accept a log first, the electronic-delivery request, the $20 estimate threshold, the MCL 15.235(5) demand for the exemption and the responsible person, and the segregation demand. Requester identifiers removed. Response Letter (redacted) The four-page letter dated September 3, 2025 captioned “Re: FOIA Request #25-194,” which calls the request both “denied” and “granted,” invokes thirteen exemptions, cites roughly 14,400 email conversations, 50 text conversations and 1,700 case files, and quotes $63,028.80 with a $31,514.40 deposit and a 270-day timeline. Requester identifiers removed. Detailed Cost Itemization (redacted) The nine-page itemization dated 09/03/2025. Locate: 43,200 minutes ÷ 15 = 2,880 increments at $6.21 = $17,870.40. Redact: 2,880 increments at $15.68 = $45,158.40. Subtotal $63,028.80; 50% deposit $31,514.40; estimated 270 days. Requester identifiers removed. Notice of Denial (redacted) The seven-page Notice of Denial dated 09/03/2025 for request 25-194, received 08/14/2025. Reason boxes 1 (“Exempt from Disclosure”) and 3 (“Redaction”) are checked, with “see attachment.” Contact: Emily DeSalvo, 906-789-5100. Requester identifiers removed. Notice to Extend Response Time (redacted) The county's extension form for request 25-194, received by fax, with reason box 1 checked — the need to review “a voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records.” Contact: Emily DeSalvo, 906-789-5100. The handwritten dates on the form are not legible enough to rely on and are not asserted on this page. Requester identifiers removed.