Illustration for FOIA 25-197: The complaints against the office
FOIA 25-197 · Granted in part, denied in part

On August 13, 2025, a requester faxed the Delta County Prosecutor's Office a request for every complaint, grievance, or formal allegation filed against the office or its employees since January 1, 2019 — and for the record of how each one was resolved. The request was deliberate about its purpose. It said so on the cover note: it was worded to capture all complaints, whatever their outcome, so that the office could not narrow the answer to the ones that happened to end badly for the complainant. Twenty-one days later, on September 3, 2025, Prosecutor Lauren M. Wickman signed a response granting the request in part and denying it in part.

What came back is not a complaint log. It is a litigation file. The office produced eight federal-court filings from two lawsuits in which Wickman herself was a named defendant — Kobasic v. Delta County and Lauren Wickman and Roberts v. Jon Doe Delta County Prosecutor, et al. — including a settlement agreement under which the county paid $60,000. It certified that no internal employee grievances exist. It certified that no complaints to the County Board of Commissioners exist. And it refused everything sent to oversight bodies, licensing boards, or the State Bar of Michigan under a confidentiality rule, MCR 9.126, without saying whether any such records exist at all.

That is the shape of FOIA 25-197, and it is worth a page for a reason that has nothing to do with the size of the production. A request designed to reveal how an office handles complaints about itself was answered with the two complaints that had already become public court records, an assurance that nothing else was ever written down, and a refusal that cannot be distinguished, on the face of the paper, from an empty file. The office's answer may be entirely lawful. What it is not is checkable — and the difference between those two things is the subject of this page.

How to read this page

Documented facts come directly from the released records and are dated and paginated. The agency's position is what the office asserted or did. Legal interpretation is analysis of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act and is labeled as such. Open questions are issues the released record does not resolve. Nothing on this page asserts that any denial was unlawful, that any certification was false, or that anyone acted in bad faith. Where the record supports only a question, only a question is stated.

Summary

FOIA 25-197 was captioned by the requester as a request for “complaints, grievances, and formal allegations” against the Delta County Prosecutor's Office and its employees, covering January 1, 2019 forward. It broke the subject into five categories: complaints and allegations generally, written complaints from the public or other agencies, internal employee grievances, complaints to oversight bodies and the State Bar and the Board of Commissioners, and the resolution or disposition records for each. It also asked, in advance, for the two things that make a denial reviewable: the exemption claimed for each withholding, and a detailed certification describing the search behind any “no records” answer.

The office's September 3 letter answered the five categories with four different dispositions. Category one was granted, and produced the eight court filings. Category two was granted by reference to the same documents. Category three, internal employee grievances, was denied on the ground that the records do not exist, supported by a written certification. Category four, complaints to oversight bodies and the State Bar, was denied as exempt under MCR 9.126 and MCL 15.243(1)(h). Category five, complaints to the County Board of Commissioners, was denied on the ground that the records do not exist, again with a certification.

The accompanying Notice of Denial form is where the paperwork becomes hard to read. It checks the “Part” box, meaning part of the request is denied. It then checks both box 1 — the exemption box, citing Section 13(1)(h) and MCR 9.126 — and box 2, the “record does not exist” box. It leaves box 3, the redaction box, unchecked. Nothing on the form says which of the five categories each box is meant to answer. A reader holding only the form cannot tell which refusal was an exemption and which was an empty shelf.

No fee was quoted, no deposit was required, and nothing was paid. The request had asked for a public-interest fee waiver under MCL 15.234 and for an estimate before processing if costs would exceed $20. Because the office assessed no charge at all, the waiver question was never reached. The response was also timely: the request was deemed received on August 14, 2025, the office took its one permitted extension on August 19, and the outer deadline after that extension was September 5. The letter is dated September 3. Whatever else this file shows, it does not show delay.

The two lawsuits are the substance of what the public got. Roberts was a civil-rights case arising from a December 8, 2016 traffic stop; it was dismissed with prejudice on August 19, 2019, after the court held that Wickman was entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity and the state trooper to qualified immunity. Kobasic arose from a 2017 dangerous-dog prosecution involving a dog named Turbo; it settled on March 16, 2022, for $60,000, with no admission of liability and a stipulation to set aside a preliminary injunction. Both cases are public court records. The FOIA did not pry them loose; it merely had them copied and mailed.

What was requested

The request is a single-spaced fax of several pages, and it is unusually careful. Its first paragraph asks for “all complaints, grievances, or formal allegations filed against the Delta County Prosecutor's Office, or its employees from January 1, 2019” through the date of processing, together with “records of the resolution, investigation, or disposition” of each. It then enumerates the sources it means to capture: members of the public, law enforcement, court staff, other government agencies, the office's own employees, oversight bodies, professional licensing boards, the State Bar of Michigan, and the County Board of Commissioners.

Four numbered “please note” conditions follow, and they are the part of the request that gives this page its argument. First, the request states that it is intentionally worded to capture all complaints regardless of resolution, so that a complaint dismissed as unfounded is as responsive as one that led to discipline. Second, it states that a “no such records exist” response will not be accepted unless accompanied by a detailed certification describing the complaint systems, logs, and databases searched, the staff and custodians consulted, and the search terms and date ranges used. Third, it states that records marked “confidential,” “personnel,” “administrative,” or “internal” are still public unless a valid statutory exemption applies, and that segregable portions must be released. Fourth, it states that any withheld record must still be described by document type, date, and general nature.

Those four conditions are not rhetorical flourishes. Each maps onto a specific obligation in the statute. The segregation demand tracks MCL 15.244, which requires a public body to separate exempt from nonexempt material and release the remainder. The description demand tracks MCL 15.235(5)(c), which requires a denial notice to describe the record or information withheld. The certification demand tracks MCL 15.235(5)(b), which requires a certificate of nonexistence that states “the name and title or position of the person responsible for the public body's determination” and that “the public record does not exist under the name given by the requester or by another name reasonably known to the public body.” The requester wrote the request to mirror the statute's own remedies, so that any shortfall in the answer would be visible on the face of the answer.

The paper trail

Figure 1 · Interactive

From two lawsuits to one FOIA: the paper trail

Three tracks on a single 2016–2026 axis. Select any point to read what happened, or filter to one track.

Select a dot
Roberts
Kobasic
FOIA expanded · Aug–Sep 2025

Select a point on any track to read what happened.

Sources: the produced court filings, the Release and Settlement Agreement, the fax receipt, the extension notice, and the September 3, 2025 response letter.

August 13, 2025 — the request arrives by fax, twice

Documented: The request reached the county by fax on August 13, 2025. The transmission record shows two separate sends, one at 12:00:48 p.m. and a second at 12:02:29 p.m., both to the county's administrative fax line. The county's own date stamp on the first page reads 08-13-2025, 8:59 a.m. The cover note is dated August 13, 2025. The requester sent the request twice, apparently to be certain it arrived.

The office's response letter and its Notice of Denial both record the request as received on August 14, 2025. That is consistent with the statute rather than with the fax machine. Under MCL 15.235(1), a request sent by fax or email is not received until one business day after it is transmitted. A fax that landed on Wednesday, August 13 is therefore received on Thursday, August 14. The office counted the day correctly, and this page credits it for doing so.

August 19, 2025 — the extension, and the blank lines

Documented: On August 19 the office issued a Notice to Extend Response Time. It records the request as received 8/13/25, checks the box for a fax, and extends the response period “for no more than 10 business days, until 9/3/25.” It gives an estimated time frame to provide records of 09/03/2025. The reason box checked is box 1, “voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records.” The signature is dated 8-19-2025.

Below the reason box, the form has a line that reads “Specifically, the County must:” followed by space for an explanation. On this notice those lines are blank. The notice therefore says that the request is voluminous, but it never says what had to be searched, where, or by whom. That is a small omission on a form, and it is the same omission that reappears, in a larger form, in the certificates of nonexistence.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The extension itself is lawful on its face. MCL 15.235(2) permits a public body to extend the response period once by up to ten business days for “unusual circumstances,” and a voluminous request is one of the circumstances the statute names. What the statute does not do is convert the extension into a substitute for a search description. The extension buys time; it does not relieve the office of the duty, at the end of that time, to say what it looked for.

September 3, 2025 — the response

Documented: The response letter is dated September 3, 2025, is printed on Prosecutor's Office letterhead, and is signed by Lauren M. Wickman. The letterhead lists Wickman as Prosecuting Attorney and Civil Counsel, Beth Wickwire as Chief Assistant Prosecutor and Deputy Civil Counsel, and Lauren Mattson as Assistant Prosecutor. The letter acknowledges the request dated August 13, 2025 and received August 14, 2025, then walks through the five categories in order, stating a disposition for each.

The letter carries no typed FOIA-coordinator signature line. The accompanying Notice of Denial names Emily DeSalvo as the contact, at 906-789-5100, and is signed by the FOIA coordinator and dated 9-3-2025. The division of labor — the elected prosecutor signs the substantive letter, the coordinator signs the form — is ordinary. It is noted here only because the request asked, for each withholding, for “the person responsible,” and the file identifies the signer of the form but not the person who made the exemption call.

What was produced: two lawsuits

Figure 2 · Interactive

Five categories asked for, five different answers

Select a card to read the answer and the legal basis. Filter by outcome with the buttons.

Select a card
2 granted 2 certified nonexistent 1 denied

Source: the September 3, 2025 response letter and Notice of Denial.

The grant produced eight documents, all of them federal-court filings. The letter lists them by case and by title: in Kobasic, the First Amended Complaint, the defendants' motion for summary judgment, and the Release and Settlement Agreement; in Roberts, the complaint, the First Amended Complaint, the response in opposition to the plaintiff's motion to file an amended complaint, the district court's opinion on the motions to dismiss, and the order and judgment dismissing the case. The packet that came with the letter also contains a ninth document the letter does not list — the defendants' response in opposition to the motion for a preliminary injunction in Kobasic, filed as ECF 18 — along with five pages of exhibits filed with the amended complaint.

Documented: Every one of those documents is a public filing in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Each bears an ECF number and a filing date. None of them is a record that exists only inside the Prosecutor's Office. The FOIA did not disclose anything that a reader with a PACER account could not already have read. What it did was confirm, on the office's own letterhead, that these two lawsuits are the complete universe of complaints against the office that the office was willing to identify.

Roberts: a traffic stop, an immunity ruling, and a dismissal

Documented: Roberts v. Jon Doe Delta County Prosecutor, et al. was filed in the Western District of Michigan as case number 2:19-cv-00023-GJQ-MV. The original complaint was filed on January 26, 2019. The First Amended Complaint was filed on May 17, 2019 as ECF 25. The events at the center of the case began with a traffic stop on December 8, 2016, conducted by a Michigan State Police trooper.

On August 19, 2019, Judge Gordon J. Quist issued an opinion, ECF 40, resolving the motions to dismiss. The court held that Wickman was entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity and that the trooper was entitled to qualified immunity. The State Police's motion was granted, and all claims against Wickman and the John Doe Prosecutor were dismissed. The same day, the court entered an order and judgment, ECF 41, dismissing all of the plaintiff's claims with prejudice and stating that the case was concluded.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: Absolute prosecutorial immunity is not a finding that the conduct alleged never happened. It is a doctrine that bars damages suits against a prosecutor for conduct taken in the prosecutor's role as an advocate, regardless of motive, because the remedy for prosecutorial misconduct is understood to lie elsewhere — in the criminal process, in professional discipline, or in injunctive relief against the office rather than the person. A dismissal on absolute immunity therefore tells a reader that the court did not reach the merits. It does not tell a reader that the complaint was unfounded, and this page does not treat it as such.

Kobasic: a dog named Turbo, and a settlement

Documented: Kobasic v. Delta County and Lauren Wickman was filed in the Western District of Michigan as case number 2:20-cv-00113-RJJ-MV. The events began with an incident on June 30, 2017 involving the plaintiff's dog, Turbo. Wickman attested to a complaint on July 10, 2017; the plaintiff was served on July 18, 2017; a trial date was set for July 28, 2017. The First Amended Complaint was filed on August 3, 2020 as ECF 5, with five pages of exhibits. The defendants' response in opposition to the motion for a preliminary injunction was filed September 21, 2020 as ECF 18. The defendants' motion for summary judgment was filed September 28, 2021 as ECF 45.

The case did not go to a jury. It settled. The Release and Settlement Agreement in the packet is four pages, signed and notarized on March 16, 2022 by notary Shelly A. Flower, Notary Public for Delta County, whose commission expired August 12, 2024. The consideration is stated in words and figures as “SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS ($60,000.00).” The agreement discharges Turbo from every euthanasia order through February 16, 2022. It states that it is not an admission of liability. It represents that the defendants have full authority to preclude prosecution of an alleged spring 2021 scratch or bite incident. And it stipulates to set aside the preliminary injunction that had been entered in the case.

One paragraph of the Kobasic complaint deserves separate mention, because it is the hinge on which the Board of Commissioners denial turns. At paragraph 24, the complaint alleges that on December 23, 2019, the plaintiff's counsel sent a letter to Escanaba “via both its counsel Lauren Wickmen and the Board of Commissioners.” At paragraph 25 it alleges that the letter included Turbo's rabies vaccination certificate, and that “no response to the December 9, 2019 letter was received.” The complaint thus gives two different dates for the same letter — December 23 in one paragraph and December 9 in the next.

This is an allegation inside a complaint, not a produced record. The packet does not contain the letter itself. It contains the plaintiff's description of the letter. That distinction matters to everything that follows, and this page does not treat the allegation as proof that any letter reached the Board.

What was denied, and what the denials leave open

Internal employee grievances: a certificate, without a search

Documented: The response letter states that there are no records responsive to the request for internal grievances filed by Prosecutor's Office employees, and that the office is therefore denying that portion of the request. A written certification accompanies the denial. The Notice of Denial checks box 2, “record does not exist.”

A certificate of nonexistence is a lawful and often appropriate answer. Small offices frequently have no formal grievance file, and a public body is not obliged to invent one. The difficulty here is not the answer. It is the absence of the support the request specifically asked for and the statute specifically contemplates: a description of the systems, logs, and databases searched, the staff and custodians consulted, and the search terms and date ranges used.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5)(b) requires a certificate of nonexistence to identify the person responsible for the determination and to state that the record does not exist under the name given or another name reasonably known. The statute does not, on its face, require a narrative search log. But the certificate is only meaningful if the search behind it was real, and a requester has no way to test the search without some account of it. That is why the request asked for one in advance. The office's certificate identifies a determination; it does not describe an inquiry.

The Board of Commissioners: a certificate, and a complaint that says otherwise

Documented: The response letter states that there are no records responsive to the request for complaints submitted to the County Board of Commissioners, and denies that portion on the ground that the records do not exist. A certification accompanies the denial. The Notice of Denial again checks box 2.

Here the file contains a tension that the office did not address. The office certified that no complaints to the Board of Commissioners exist. The very packet the office produced as responsive includes a complaint alleging that counsel for a plaintiff sent a letter to the Board of Commissioners in December 2019. Those two statements can coexist: an allegation in a complaint is not a complaint to the Board, and a letter to the Board is not necessarily a complaint about the Prosecutor's Office. But the office did not explain the coexistence. It did not say whether it searched the Board's correspondence, whether it asked the Board, or whether it treated the Kobasic paragraph as outside the scope of the request.

This page states the tension as a question, not a finding. Did the office search for the December 2019 letter, and if it did, what did it find? The record produced does not answer that, and a reader should not infer from the certificate alone that no such letter ever existed.

Oversight bodies and the State Bar: a refusal that cannot be read

Documented: The response letter denies the category covering complaints submitted to oversight bodies, professional licensing boards, and the State Bar of Michigan. It cites MCR 9.126, which governs the confidentiality of attorney-grievance investigations that do not result in formal charges, and it cites MCL 15.243(1)(h) as the FOIA exemption. The letter does not state whether any responsive records exist.

That last sentence is the whole problem. A denial that says “these records are exempt” is a different denial from one that says “these records do not exist.” The first concedes that something is there and withholds it. The second denies that anything is there. The office's answer to this category does neither clearly. It invokes a confidentiality rule without confirming that the rule has anything to operate on. A requester reading the letter cannot tell whether the office is protecting a grievance file or describing an empty drawer.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCR 9.126 makes grievance investigations confidential until formal charges are filed, and that confidentiality is real. The question a FOIA request raises is a different one: whether a county prosecutor's office holds records of grievances against its own prosecuting attorney, and whether the rule that binds the Attorney Grievance Commission also governs a county office's copy of a grievance. The letter does not work through that question. It cites the rule and stops. The exemption it invokes, MCL 15.243(1)(h), is not explained in the letter, and the letter does not say how it applies to a file held by a county rather than by the commission.

None of this establishes that the denial was wrong. It establishes that the denial was not written in a way that lets a reader evaluate it. That is a transparency problem even where the underlying call is correct.

Procedural observations

The form checks two inconsistent boxes. The Notice of Denial marks “Part” to show a partial denial, then checks box 1 (exempt, Section 13(1)(h), MCR 9.126) and box 2 (record does not exist). Box 3, redaction, is left blank. The form has no field mapping a box to a category. A reader who receives only the form — which is the document a requester is most likely to keep — cannot reconstruct which of the five categories was exempt and which was empty.

The certificates do not describe the search. Both certificates of nonexistence identify a determination. Neither describes the complaint systems, logs, or databases searched, the custodians consulted, or the search terms and date ranges. The request asked for exactly that, and the request's cover note explained why: without it, a certificate cannot be tested.

The production contains a document the letter does not list. The response letter enumerates eight documents. The packet contains a ninth — ECF 18, the defendants' response in opposition to the motion for a preliminary injunction — plus five pages of exhibits. An unlisted document is not a withheld document; if anything, it is an over-production. But it means the letter's inventory is not a complete index of the packet, and a reader who relied on the letter alone would not know the response to the injunction motion had been produced.

The packet has a gap. ECF 18 in Kobasic is paginated as “Page 29 of 30,” and the packet's copy of that filing ends before page 30. The missing page is not identified in the letter, and the office did not flag it. Whether page 30 was omitted from the production or simply does not exist in the court's version of the document cannot be determined from the packet. It is noted here so that a reader relying on the produced copy knows it is incomplete on its face.

Figure 3 · Interactive

The response clock, business day by business day

Deemed receipt on August 14, 2025. The statute allows five business days, plus one extension of up to ten more. Select a milestone below.

13 of 15 business days used

Read it plainly: the response was timely — two business days inside the extended limit. September 1, 2025 (Labor Day) is excluded as a day the county was closed. Separately, the 180-day window to bring a circuit-court action under MCL 15.240 closed on March 2, 2026. Sources: fax record, extension notice, response letter, and the deadlines in MCL 15.235 and MCL 15.240.

The response was timely. It is worth stating plainly because it is the one procedural measure on which the office comes out clean. Deemed receipt was Thursday, August 14, 2025. The fifth business day was Thursday, August 21. The office took its single ten-business-day extension on August 19, which moved the outer limit to Friday, September 5. The response is dated Wednesday, September 3 — two days inside the limit. The extension notice was issued before the original deadline expired, as the statute requires. On timing, there is nothing to criticize.

What this record does not show

This page does not show that any complaint against the office was concealed. It does not show that the certificates of nonexistence were false. It does not show that the MCR 9.126 denial was improper. It does not show that the December 2019 letter to the Board of Commissioners exists, or that it does not.

What the record does show is narrower and more useful. It shows that the office's answer to a request about complaints against itself consisted of two lawsuits that were already public, two certificates that describe a conclusion but not a search, and one refusal that does not say whether anything exists. It shows that the office produced no complaint intake log, no complaint file, no investigation memo, and no disposition record from inside the office — the internal paper trail that a request of this kind is designed to reach. And it shows that the office did not explain how the two lawsuits it produced relate to the complaint process the request asked about, or whether any other complaint was ever logged and closed without litigation.

A reader should also keep in mind what a FOIA request can and cannot do. It can compel the production of records that exist. It cannot compel an office to create a record it never kept, and it cannot force an explanation of a record that was never made. If the office genuinely maintains no complaint log, the certificate is the truthful answer, and the absence of a log is itself the finding — not a FOIA violation, but a fact about how the office handles complaints.

Next steps and remedies

The court route has closed on this record. Under MCL 15.240, a requester who prevails in a circuit-court action may recover attorney fees, costs, and disbursements, together with actual or compensatory damages, a civil fine of $1,000, and punitive damages of $1,000. The action must be brought within 180 days of the denial. The denial here is dated September 3, 2025, which puts the 180-day deadline at March 2, 2026. That date has passed. A challenge to these denials is no longer available on this request.

A new request can still reach the same ground. The most productive follow-up is not another demand for “all complaints,” which invites the same three answers. It is a set of narrower requests, each aimed at a record that must exist if the office's account is accurate. First, ask for the office's written complaint-intake procedure and any form used to log a complaint, on the theory that an office which certifies no grievances exist still has a procedure for receiving them. Second, ask the Board of Commissioners, under its own FOIA obligations, for all correspondence from 2019 to 2022 concerning the Kobasic matter, including any December 2019 letter from plaintiff's counsel. Third, ask the office for its litigation-hold, claims-notice, and outside-counsel files for Kobasic and Roberts, which are records the office necessarily created and which are not court filings. Fourth, ask for the office's annual certification or self-assessment to its insurer concerning claims and lawsuits, which may describe the two cases in the office's own words.

Ask the right body for the State Bar records. If the object is to learn whether any grievance was filed against the prosecuting attorney, the office to ask is the Attorney Grievance Commission, not the county. The commission is the custodian of grievance records, and its own confidentiality rules govern its answer. A request to the county will keep producing the same citation to MCR 9.126; a request to the commission will at least produce an answer from the body that holds the file.

Ask for the search, in a separate request. The certificates of nonexistence are the weakest link in this production, and they can be tested without challenging the denials themselves. A request for “all records documenting the search conducted in response to FOIA 25-197, including search logs, emails, and notes” asks for records the office created when it answered this request. If the search was documented, the documentation is a public record. If it was not, the answer is another certificate — and the pattern of certificates becomes the story.

A preservation letter is prudent for anyone contemplating the next round. The two lawsuits, the settlement, and the FOIA correspondence are all within a foreseeable-litigation window. A written demand that the office and the county preserve complaint intake records, claims notices, and litigation files should go out before any new request, so that a later “does not exist” cannot be the product of routine destruction.

Authorities consulted

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

The statutory analysis above rests on the text of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. The provisions most directly engaged are MCL 15.233(1) (certificate that a record does not exist under the name given or another name reasonably known), MCL 15.235(1) (a fax or email request is not received until one business day after transmission), MCL 15.235(2) (five business days, with one extension of up to ten business days for unusual circumstances), MCL 15.235(5)(a) through (d) (the contents of a denial notice, including the basis for the denial, the certificate of nonexistence, the description of the record withheld, and the explanation of appeal rights), MCL 15.240 (written appeal, the 180-day civil action, de novo review, attorney fees, the $1,000 civil fine, and $1,000 punitive damages), and MCL 15.244 (segregation of exempt material and release of the remainder).

The fee provisions engaged by the request are MCL 15.234, including the public-interest waiver the requester asked for and the estimate the requester requested before processing. Because the office quoted no fee, the waiver analysis was never reached and no fee appeal under MCL 15.240a arises on this record.

The confidentiality rule invoked by the office is MCR 9.126, which governs the confidentiality of attorney-grievance investigations that do not result in formal charges. The FOIA exemption cited alongside it is MCL 15.243(1)(h); the response letter does not explain its application, and this page does not supply an interpretation the office did not give.

The litigation facts come from the produced federal-court filings themselves: the First Amended Complaint, the response in opposition to the preliminary-injunction motion, and the summary-judgment motion in Kobasic v. Delta County and Lauren Wickman, No. 2:20-cv-00113-RJJ-MV (W.D. Mich.); the complaint, First Amended Complaint, response in opposition to the motion to amend, opinion, and order and judgment in Roberts v. Jon Doe Delta County Prosecutor, et al., No. 2:19-cv-00023-GJQ-MV (W.D. Mich.); and the Release and Settlement Agreement dated March 16, 2022.

On the figures. The $60,000 settlement figure is taken from the Release and Settlement Agreement itself, which states the consideration in both words and figures. No other dollar amount appears in this production. The office quoted no fee, required no deposit, and was paid nothing for this request.

On the redactions. The requester's name, address, telephone number, and email address have been removed from every document published with this article, including the request, the fax cover pages, the response letter, the denial form, and the extension notice. No substantive content was removed. The court filings are published as the office produced them; they are public records of the United States District Court and were not redacted by this archive.

On the December 2019 letter. The letter to the Board of Commissioners appears in this record only as an allegation at paragraphs 24 and 25 of the Kobasic First Amended Complaint, which gives two different dates for it. The letter itself was not produced. This page describes it as an allegation and does not treat it as established fact.

Correlation note — added October 25, 2026. FOIA 25-197 is the complaints file that sits behind several others in this archive. FOIA 25-239 documented the office's handling of officer-credibility information; this request shows what happens when the subject of the complaint is the office itself. The two files share a technique: where 25-239 answered a request for a maintained list with a case-by-case practice, 25-197 answered a request for a complaint record with two lawsuits and two certificates. In both, the office's answer describes what it chose to produce rather than what it looked for. Read together, they suggest that the office's default response to a request about its own internal operations is to narrow the record to what is already public and to certify the rest out of existence.

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 and Fax Cover Sheet (redacted) The request as faxed on August 13, 2025, with its cover note and four conditions on how a “no records” answer must be supported. Requester identifiers removed. Response Letter, Denial Form and Extension Notice (redacted) The September 3, 2025 letter, the Notice of Denial form with boxes 1 and 2 both checked, and the August 19 extension notice. Fax Record and Notice Packet (redacted) Fax transmission records, the county's FOIA policy page, and the statutory excerpts on appeal that accompanied the notice. Kobasic v Delta County and Wickman — produced filings First Amended Complaint with exhibits, the defendants' response on the preliminary injunction, and the summary-judgment motion, as produced by the office. Roberts v Doe — produced filings Complaint, First Amended Complaint, response to the motion to amend, the district court opinion, and the order and judgment dismissing the case. Release and Settlement Agreement (Kobasic) The four-page settlement agreement, signed and notarized March 16, 2022, with a $60,000 payment and no admission of liability.