Illustration for FOIA 25-215: One request, three answers, and a $13,248 estimate
FOIA 25-215 · Granted in part

On August 9, 2025, a request went to the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office asking for any records, reports, data or summaries that document average or median case processing times for criminal cases in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The office received it by fax on September 9, 2025 at 2:56 p.m. and answered on September 15, 2025. In that one letter it gave the same request three different answers: it denied the records as nonexistent, denied the reports as nonexistent, and then granted the data — subject to redaction and a fee estimate of $13,248, with a $6,624 deposit and a 180-day production window.

What the office produced instead of its own processing-time data were seven Michigan State Court Administrative Office publications about the courts: clearance rates for the 94th District Court and the 47th Circuit Court from 2006 to 2024, a case-age report, Administrative Order 2011-3, and the Michigan Courts “Case Management for Trial Courts” guidance. It also told the requester that the request might better be sent to the 94th District Court or the 47th Circuit Court. Not one page of the thirty-page responsive set measures the Prosecutor’s Office’s own time from charging decision to resolution.

The same packet carries a second, separate fee itemization — $3,312 for FOIA 25-137, a request the office says it already denied and defended on appeal. The office re-priced a request it had already refused, and attached the new price to a different request’s response. Both itemizations are reproduced in the documents below.

How to read this page

This page separates four things that are easy to blur together. First, what was asked. Second, how one request received three dispositions in a single letter. Third, what the office actually produced — the court statistics, and what they do and do not measure. Fourth, what it charged, which is $13,248 for records it simultaneously certifies do not exist.

Where the record supports criticism, the criticism is made and the page cites the page of the packet. Where the record is silent, the page says so rather than filling the gap. The office’s letter is quoted at length because its own words are the strongest evidence of the pattern it describes. The documents are linked at the bottom of this page in redacted form.

Summary

The request named one subject — case processing time — and asked for it in several forms: records that document it, a definition of it, statistics and reports the office maintains, and the same in electronic form where available. It also asked for a certificate of nonexistence if no records existed, an itemized estimate in advance if charges would exceed $20, and a waiver of all fees under MCL 15.234.

The September 15 letter answers in three parts. On “records, reports, … or summaries … that document average or median case processing times,” it denies: the records do not exist, and the letter prints the standard certificate. On “any statistics, summaries, or reports the Prosecutor’s Office maintains internally or for external reporting purposes,” it denies again: “there are no such reports that are maintained internally or for any external report purposes,” and prints a second certificate. Then, on “data maintained by the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office that document average or median case processing times,” it grants — subject to redaction under MCL 15.243(1)(a) and a fee.

That third disposition is the one that makes the letter hard to read as a single coherent answer. If the data exists — and a grant presupposes that it does — then what exactly was certified nonexistent in the first two paragraphs? If it does not exist, what was granted? The letter does not reconcile the three. It simply moves from one to the next, each with its own paragraph and, for the two denials, its own certificate.

The fee attached to the grant is the largest in this archive. The itemization charges 1,066.67 quarter-hour increments to locate the records and the same 1,066.67 increments again to redact them, at $6.21 per quarter hour — an hourly wage of $24.82 including fringe. That is roughly 266.7 hours on each side, about 533 hours in total, for a subtotal of $13,248 and a required deposit of $6,624. The office estimates 180 days from receipt of the deposit to produce the records.

What was asked, and how the office answered

The request was dated August 9, 2025. The office’s own receipt shows it arrived by fax on September 9, 2025 at 2:56 p.m., and the letter carries a footnote acknowledging the gap: “This is believed to be a typo or oversight, as the request was received by Fax on September 9, 2025.” The office answered six days after receipt, on September 15, 2025, well inside the statutory response window.

The request asked, in substance:

“Any records, reports, data or summaries maintained by the office that document average or median case processing times for criminal cases, 2020 through 2023” — together with a definition of case processing time as the period between case initiation and final resolution, any statistics or reports the office maintains internally or for external reporting, the same in electronic form where available, a certificate of nonexistence if no responsive records exist, an itemized fee estimate in advance if charges would exceed $20, and a waiver of all fees under MCL 15.234.

The disposition line is “GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART.” The letter then splits the request into three, and answers each separately. On the first it writes that “that system is no longer available to the Prosecutor’s Office in any way,” and prints the certificate of nonexistence. On the second it writes that “there are no such reports that are maintained internally or for any external report purposes,” and prints a second certificate. On the third it grants, subject to redaction and a fee.

The cost narrative explains where the fee comes from. Because the request covers a period “before the adoption of ProsecutorbyKarpel,” the letter says, “a review of dockets and calendars from 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 will be required to generate a case list” — approximately 1,000 files per year, for four years, with “at least five documents related to each file.” From that estimate the itemization is built. The letter does not state when ProsecutorByKarpel was adopted; this page does not assert an implementation date either.

Because the estimated fee exceeds fifty dollars, the letter requires a deposit of fifty percent — $6,624 — and estimates 180 days from receipt of the deposit to produce the records. The letter also notes that the request “is substantially similar to FOIA Request 25-137,” which “has already been responded to, appealed to the head of the public body, and the denial was upheld,” and that the office has “provided an update in the form of an estimate in further response to FOIA Request 25-137.” That update is the second itemization in the same packet.

The paper trail

The chronology is short and precise, and it is worth laying out because the timing is one of the few parts of this response that is not in dispute.

Figure 1 · Interactive

From the request to the three answers

Select a marker to read what the record shows for that date. The final marker is the production estimate the office gave, which runs from a deposit that was never paid.

Record
Days from receipt to answer6
Dispositions in one letter3
Fee estimated$13,248
Production window180 days

Source: the Zimbra fax receipt, the original request with its footnote, and the response letter dated September 15, 2025. The production estimate is stated in the letter and the itemization; the deposit that would start it was not paid.

Figure 1. Six days from receipt to a twenty-eight-page answer, and inside that answer three separate dispositions of a single request. The 180-day clock the letter describes never began, because it runs from a deposit that was never made.

One request, three dispositions

The cleanest way to see what happened is to set the three dispositions side by side, because the letter never does. Each is a separate paragraph in the response, and each describes the same four years of case processing time in a different way.

Figure 2 · Interactive

Three dispositions, one request

Select a disposition to read what the letter says about it. Filter by whether the office produced the records or certified them out of existence.

Select a disposition

Source: the disposition section of the September 15, 2025 response letter and the two certificates of nonexistence printed beneath it, read against the record types enumerated in the request.

Figure 2. The same request, answered three ways. Two certificates of nonexistence and one grant, all in a single letter, all describing the same four years of case processing time.
Table 1. The three dispositions in the September 15, 2025 letter, and what each says.
Portion of the requestDispositionWhat the response says
“Records, reports, … or summaries … that document average or median case processing times”Denied — nonexistentThe tracking system that would have held them “is no longer available to the Prosecutor’s Office in any way.” A certificate of nonexistence is printed.
“Any statistics, summaries, or reports the Prosecutor’s Office maintains internally or for external reporting purposes”Denied — nonexistent“There are no such reports that are maintained internally or for any external report purposes.” A second certificate of nonexistence is printed.
“Data maintained by the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office that document average or median case processing times”Granted — subject to redaction and a feeGranted under MCL 15.243(1)(a) with redaction of names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, criminal identification numbers, docket numbers and case numbers. Fee estimate $13,248, deposit $6,624, 180 days from deposit.

Read down the disposition column and the problem appears. Two of three portions are closed with a certificate that the records do not exist. The third is opened and then priced. The three paragraphs are not reconciled anywhere in the letter, and the fee itemization that follows treats the third as though the data were plainly there to be found — 1,066.67 quarter-hour increments to locate it, and the same again to redact it.

What the office produced instead

Alongside the three dispositions, the letter lists seven items it produced “for the sake of transparency,” and points the requester to the Michigan courts’ Interactive Court Data Dashboard. They are:

  • Clearance Rates for the 94th District Court, 2006 to 2024
  • Clearance Rate for the 94th District Court, 2019 to 2024
  • Clearance Rate for the 47th Circuit Court, 2006 to 2024
  • Clearance Rate for the 47th Circuit Court, 2019 to 2024
  • Case Age for the 47th Circuit Court Criminal, 2006 to 2024
  • Michigan Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 2011-3, as amended
  • The Michigan Courts “Case Management for Trial Courts” guidance pages

These are court records, not prosecutor records. The clearance rate is a measure of how a court disposes of the cases that come before it — cases disposed divided by cases filed — and the dashboards that report it are maintained by the State Court Administrative Office. The letter says as much when it suggests the request “would be best submitted to the 94th District Court or 47th Circuit Court.” What the office produced, in other words, is the nearest available public data about case flow, produced by a different branch of government, in place of the office’s own internal measure.

The figures are real and worth reading, because they are the only numbers in the packet that speak to case flow at all. For the 94th District Court in Delta County, the clearance rate from 2019 to 2024 runs:

Figure 3 · Interactive

94th District Court clearance rate, 2019 to 2024

Cases disposed as a share of cases filed. Above 100 percent means the court closed more cases than it took in that year. Select a year to read the underlying counts.

Years reported6
Lowest82%
Highest119%
Above 100%5 of 6

Source: Michigan Interactive Court Data Dashboard clearance-rate screens for the 94th District Court, Delta County, produced with the September 15, 2025 response. Counts are as printed on the dashboard.

Figure 3. The 94th District Court cleared more cases than it received in five of the six years shown, with 2020 the pandemic exception. These are the court’s numbers, not the prosecutor’s.

For the 47th Circuit Court, felony cases in Delta County, the clearance rate from 2019 to 2024 runs:

Figure 4 · Interactive

47th Circuit Court felony clearance rate, 2019 to 2024

Felony cases disposed as a share of felony cases filed. Select a year to read the underlying counts.

Years reported6
Lowest78%
Highest121%
Above 100%2 of 6

Source: Michigan Interactive Court Data Dashboard clearance-rate screens for the 47th Circuit Court, Delta County, felony cases, produced with the September 15, 2025 response. Counts are as printed on the dashboard.

Figure 4. The 47th Circuit Court’s felony clearance rate swung from 78 percent in 2019 to 121 percent in 2022 and settled near break-even in 2023 and 2024. Again, these are the court’s numbers.
Table 2. Clearance rates produced with the response, as printed on the Michigan Interactive Court Data Dashboard.
Year94th District — disposed / filed94th District rate47th Circuit felony — disposed / filed47th Circuit rate
20191,472 / 1,526104%291 / 22778%
20201,384 / 1,13382%278 / 25993%
20211,282 / 1,410110%275 / 286104%
20221,050 / 1,251119%221 / 267121%
20231,029 / 1,047102%210 / 20899%
20241,092 / 1,158106%206 / 20298%

None of this answers the question that was asked. A clearance rate tells you how a court’s dispositions compare to its filings in a given year. It does not tell you how long the Prosecutor’s Office took to charge a case, or how long a case sat between charging and resolution. The request asked for the office’s own processing time; the response produced the court’s throughput. The two are related, and they are not the same measurement.

The letter is candid about the distinction, and its candor is worth quoting. It argues that warrant authorization “is actually a task handled by the District Court staff,” that arrest, hearing scheduling, trial scheduling and plea timing are “outside the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office,” and that “‘case processing time’ is not a fundamental measure of prosecutorial efficiency.” That is a real argument about what the office can and cannot control. It is also, read plainly, an argument that the office does not track the thing the request asked for — which is consistent with the two certificates of nonexistence, and inconsistent with the grant and the $13,248 estimate that follow them.

The fee: $13,248 for records said not to exist

The fee itemization is the most concrete document in the packet, and the arithmetic is straightforward. The office estimates it will take 1,066.67 quarter-hour increments to locate the records and the same 1,066.67 increments again to redact them. At $6.21 per quarter hour — an hourly wage of $24.82 including fringe — each side comes to $6,624, for a subtotal of $13,248. The deposit is fifty percent, or $6,624.

Table 3. FOIA 25-215 fee itemization, as printed in the September 15, 2025 packet.
LineIncrements (quarter hours)RateAmount
Locate / search1,066.67$6.21$6,624
Redact / separate exempt1,066.67$6.21$6,624
Copying, contract redaction, duplication, mailing——$0
Subtotal fees2,133.34—$13,248
Deposit required (50%)——$6,624

Two things about that table are worth pausing on. The first is the scale. 2,133.34 quarter-hour increments is about 533 hours of work — roughly three months of one full-time employee’s time — to locate and redact records that the same letter, two paragraphs earlier, certifies do not exist. The office’s own cost narrative explains where the hours come from: approximately 1,000 files per year for four years, at least five documents per file. That is a real volume. It is also a volume of records the letter says it does not have.

The second is the discounts. The itemization has a line for the $20 indigence discount and a line for the $20 nonprofit discount, and neither box is marked. The request asked for a waiver of all fees under MCL 15.234, and the response does not rule on the waiver at all. A public-interest request about the office’s own efficiency — the kind of request that exists to inform the public about how its prosecutor performs — is priced at $13,248 with no decision on whether the fee should be waived.

Then there is the second itemization. Pages seventeen through twenty-three of the packet contain a separate FOIA Fee Itemization for request 25-137: 266.67 locate increments and 266.67 redact increments at the same $6.21 rate, a $3,312 subtotal and a $1,656 deposit. The letter describes this as “an update in the form of an estimate in further response to FOIA Request 25-137.” In other words, the office re-priced a request it had already denied and defended on appeal, and delivered the new price inside the response to a different request.

Table 4. The two fee itemizations in the same September 15, 2025 packet.
RequestLocateRedactSubtotalDeposit (50%)
25-215 (this request)1,066.67 × $6.21 = $6,6241,066.67 × $6.21 = $6,624$13,248$6,624
25-137 (earlier request)266.67 × $6.21 = $1,656266.67 × $6.21 = $1,656$3,312$1,656

The two estimates are consistent in method and different in scale, which is what one would expect if the office applied the same per-file formula to two different volumes. The 25-215 estimate covers four years at roughly 1,000 files a year; the 25-137 estimate covers a narrower slice. What is not explained is why a request that has already been denied and upheld on appeal is being re-priced at all, or why the new price arrives attached to a different request’s response rather than its own.

The form records a different decision again

Page five of the packet is a “Notice of Denial of FOIA Request” form. It records request number 25-215, date received 09/09/2025, and date of this notice 09/15/2025. The form is the state template with numbered reasons for denial, and on this form boxes 1, 2 and 3 all appear marked: the record is exempt, the record does not exist, and redaction.

The redaction description written on the form names the categories the office says it would remove from any located document: “names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers, criminal identification numbers, docket numbers, case numbers.” The contact listed for questions is Emily DeSalvo at 906-789-5100.

Three boxes checked on one form is unusual, and it is the form’s way of trying to record all three dispositions at once. But a form with three reasons checked does not tell a reader which reason applies to which part of the request. A person reading only the form would see a denial on exemption, nonexistence and redaction grounds, without knowing that the letter actually granted one portion and denied two others. The form compresses a three-part answer into a single checkbox grid, and in doing so it loses the distinction the letter spends three paragraphs drawing.

Opinion: the certificate, the grant, and the hours in between

Here is what will not leave me alone about this response. The office certified, under signature, that it keeps no record of its own case processing time. Then, in the same letter, it granted a request for that data and estimated 533 hours and $13,248 to produce it. Both of those things are in the packet, a few paragraphs apart, and they cannot both be true in any ordinary sense.

I have read enough of this office’s responses now to recognize the shape. FOIA 25-199 did the same thing: one request, three dispositions, deny and deny and grant, each in its own paragraph. When it happens once, it can be a drafting choice. When it happens twice, in the same office, in the same year, on requests that ask the same kind of question, it starts to look like a method. The method is to answer a broad request by breaking it into pieces, certifying the pieces that are inconvenient out of existence, and pricing the piece that remains so that it is granted on paper and never produced in fact.

I want to be fair to the office, because there is a reading in which none of this is improper. Michigan’s case-tracking systems changed, and the office says the older system “is no longer available to the Prosecutor’s Office in any way.” If that is true, then the records genuinely may not exist in a retrievable form, and the certificate is honest. The grant, on that reading, is the office saying: we can reconstruct the data from dockets and calendars, but it will take 533 hours, and here is what that costs. That is a coherent story, and it is the story the letter tells.

But if that is the story, then the two certificates are doing something they should not. A certificate of nonexistence is a formal statement that a record does not exist. If the office can reconstruct the data from dockets and calendars — if it can locate it, at a price — then the data exists in some form, even if it is not sitting in a system that still runs. Certifying it nonexistent while simultaneously pricing its reconstruction is not a drafting slip. It is a choice about which answer to give first, and it gives the requester two answers that cannot be reconciled.

The second thing that will not leave me alone is what the office produced instead. Thirty pages of court statistics, clearance rates, case-age dashboards, an administrative order and a case-management guide. It is more paper than most denials produce, and it is genuinely informative about the courts. But it is not the office’s data. It is the court’s data, produced by the State Court Administrative Office, about how the courts dispose of cases. The office told the requester, in effect: here is the nearest public measure of case flow, and by the way, the thing you actually asked for is not a fundamental measure of what we do.

That last sentence is the tell. “‘Case processing time’ is not a fundamental measure of prosecutorial efficiency.” Perhaps not. But the public is entitled to decide for itself what measures its prosecutor’s performance, and it cannot decide without the data. The office’s position amounts to saying the data is not important, and also that it will cost $13,248 to produce. A record that is unimportant and expensive and nonexistent all at once is a record the public will never see, and that is the outcome the response produces, whatever its intent.

The remedy is not an accusation. It is a narrower request and a paid deposit, or an appeal of the certificates, or both. What the record shows, today, is a prosecutor’s office that answered one question three ways, produced the court’s numbers in place of its own, and put a price on data it says it does not have. That is worth publishing precisely because it is so hard to make coherent, and because the incoherence is the point.

The legal framework, in plain terms

The statutes below are the ones the response relies on, plus the ones that govern the parts of the response that are in tension with each other. They are set out here so a reader can check the analysis against the text rather than against this page’s summary of it.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.233(1) requires a public body, upon written request, to provide a requesting person “reasonable opportunity to inspect or copy” a public record. The right is to the record, not to a description of it, and it is not conditioned on the requester’s purpose. The thirty pages of court statistics produced here satisfy the statute for what was actually produced; they do not satisfy it for the office’s own processing-time data, which was certified nonexistent on one hand and priced on the other.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(2) requires a public body to respond within five business days, either by granting, denying, or granting in part and denying in part. The office responded six days after receipt, on September 15, 2025, which is within the window once the September 9 receipt date is used. On timing, the record shows compliance. The difficulty is not the timing but the content: a response that grants a portion and denies two others must say clearly which is which, and this one does so only by inference.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5)(b) permits a public body to certify that a record does not exist, and the certificate is a denial for purposes of appeal. The office printed two such certificates here, one for “records, reports, … or summaries” and one for “statistics, summaries, or reports.” A certificate is a sworn statement that the record does not exist “under the name nor any other name reasonably known to the public body.” Where the same letter also grants “data” on the same subject and prices its reconstruction, the certificates and the grant describe the same records differently.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234(1) permits a public body to charge for the cost of searching for, locating and examining records, for review and separation of exempt from nonexempt information, and for copying. MCL 15.234(3) permits a deposit of up to one-half of the projected fee when the estimate exceeds fifty dollars. The itemization here follows that structure: 1,066.67 locate increments and 1,066.67 redact increments at $6.21, a $13,248 subtotal, and a $6,624 deposit. The arithmetic is internally consistent.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234(2) requires that a public body not charge more than the actual cost of the search, review, separation and copying. An estimate is not a final charge, and the statute contemplates that the final fee will be adjusted to actual cost. The $13,248 figure here is an estimate built from a per-file assumption — roughly 1,000 files a year, five documents per file — and the letter does not explain how that assumption was tested against the actual volume of responsive records.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234(1) and the office’s own fee schedule provide for a $20 indigence discount and a $20 nonprofit discount. The itemization leaves both boxes unmarked. The request asked for a waiver of all fees under MCL 15.234, and the response does not address the waiver request. A public body is not obliged to grant a waiver, but it is obliged to rule on the request it received, and this response does not.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.243(1)(a) exempts information of a personal nature where disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy. This is the exemption the grant cites as the basis for redaction, and it is the ordinary ground for removing names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers and criminal identification numbers from case records. Applied to a case list, it is a defensible basis for redaction. It does not, by itself, justify withholding the aggregate processing-time data the request asked for.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.240(1) gives a requester the right to appeal a denial, in whole or in part, to the public body’s head or to the circuit court. A certificate of nonexistence is a denial for these purposes, and a grant conditioned on a fee the requester has not accepted is at least arguably a partial denial. The response reproduces the appeal route to the chairperson of the Delta County Board of Commissioners and to the Delta County Circuit Court. No appeal was taken here, and this page does not fault the requester for that choice.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.240(6) allows a court to award reasonable attorney fees and costs to a requester who prevails in an action to compel disclosure, and MCL 15.240(7) allows punitive damages of $1,000 where a public body has arbitrarily and capriciously violated the act. These are the enforcement mechanisms behind everything above, and they become available only if a requester can identify a specific denial to challenge. A response that gives three dispositions at once makes that identification harder, not easier.

Authorities and sources cited on this page

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

Every factual statement above is drawn from the documents the office produced, and every legal statement is drawn from the Michigan Freedom of Information Act as cited. The sources are:

  • FOIA request 25-215, dated August 9, 2025 and received by fax September 9, 2025 at 2:56 p.m., as shown on the Zimbra fax receipt and quoted in the response letter.
  • Response letter of September 15, 2025 from the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office, signed by Lauren M. Wickman, Prosecuting Attorney and Civil Counsel, twenty-eight pages including forms and two fee itemizations.
  • Certificate of nonexistence for “records, reports, … or summaries” documenting case processing times, printed in the response letter.
  • Second certificate of nonexistence for “statistics, summaries, or reports” maintained internally or for external reporting, printed in the response letter.
  • FOIA Fee Itemization for 25-215: 1,066.67 locate increments and 1,066.67 redact increments at $6.21 per quarter hour, $13,248 subtotal, $6,624 deposit, 180-day estimate.
  • FOIA Fee Itemization for 25-137: 266.67 locate increments and 266.67 redact increments at $6.21 per quarter hour, $3,312 subtotal, $1,656 deposit.
  • Notice of Denial of FOIA Request form, request 25-215, date received 09/09/2025, date of notice 09/15/2025, boxes 1, 2 and 3 marked, redaction description naming names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, criminal identification numbers, docket numbers and case numbers, contact Emily DeSalvo, 906-789-5100.
  • Michigan Interactive Court Data Dashboard clearance-rate screens for the 94th District Court and the 47th Circuit Court, Delta County, 2006 to 2024 and year by year from 2019 to 2024.
  • Case Age for the 47th Circuit Court Criminal, 2006 to 2024.
  • Michigan Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 2011-3, as amended, and the Michigan Courts “Case Management for Trial Courts” guidance pages.
  • Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.231 through 15.246, in particular MCL 15.233, 15.234, 15.235, 15.240 and 15.243.

The redacted copies of the response, the forms, the two itemizations, the original request and the responsive court data are linked under Documents below. Requester identifying information has been removed from the published copies; the substance of the response and the responsive documents is unchanged.

What would move this forward

Three follow-ups would resolve most of what is unresolved on this page, and each is narrow enough to be answerable.

The first is a defined slice of the data, small enough that the fee is payable. Rather than asking again for four years at roughly 1,000 files a year, a request limited to a single year and a single case type — for example, all felony cases charged in 2023, with the date of charging and the date of final resolution — is small enough that an estimate would be meaningful and a deposit could be paid. That is what MCL 15.235(2)(c) contemplates when it lets a requester narrow a request to reduce cost, and it only works if the office is willing to price a narrower request proportionally.

The second is the waiver. The request asked for a waiver of all fees under MCL 15.234, and the response did not rule on it. A one-paragraph follow-up asking only for a written decision on the waiver — granted or denied, with the reason — should produce either a decision or a statement that none was made. Either answer is informative, and a denial would at least be appealable.

The third is the reconstruction basis. The office says it can rebuild the data from dockets and calendars at a cost of 533 hours. A request for the methodology behind that estimate — the per-file assumption, the document count, and any sampling or test the office ran to arrive at 1,000 files a year — would show whether the $13,248 figure is a measured cost or a rough projection. That request is narrow, it concerns the office’s own fee-setting, and it is the kind of record a public body should be able to produce about its own process.

Until one of those produces a document, the record stands as it is: one request answered three ways, two certificates that the data does not exist, one grant that prices its production at $13,248, thirty pages of the court’s statistics in place of the office’s own, and a second fee estimate for a request the office says it already refused.

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.

Determination letter, September 15, 2025 The four-page letter denying the request twice as nonexistent, granting it a third time subject to redaction and a fee, arguing that case processing time is largely outside the prosecutor's control, and listing the seven court-statistics publications the office supplied instead. Requester name and address removed. Notice of Denial, appeal form and FOIA policies, September 15, 2025 Five pages: the Notice of Denial of FOIA Request for 25-215 with boxes 1, 2 and 3 marked and the redaction description written out, the MCL 15.240 excerpt, the county FOIA appeal form, and the county's FOIA written policies page. Requester name, address, email and zip removed. FOIA Fee Itemizations, 25-215 and 25-137 Fourteen pages containing two separate itemizations. The first, for 25-215, charges 1,066.67 quarter-hour increments to locate and 1,066.67 again to redact at $6.21 per quarter hour, for a $13,248 subtotal and a $6,624 deposit. The second, for 25-137, charges 266.67 increments each side at the same rate, for a $3,312 subtotal and a $1,656 deposit. Neither form marks the indigence or nonprofit discount box. Original request and fax receipt Five pages: the Zimbra fax-receipt notices showing the request arrived September 9, 2025 at 2:56 p.m., the original August 9, 2025 request with its statement of public interest, and the requester's Exhibit A — a screenshot of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office public data dashboard offered as a model. Requester signature block removed. Responsive documents: Michigan court statistics and case-management material Thirty pages produced with the response: the Michigan Interactive Court Data Dashboard clearance-rate screens for the 94th District Court and the 47th Circuit Court, 2006 to 2024 and year by year from 2019 to 2024; the 47th Circuit case-age report; Michigan Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 2011-3; and the Michigan Courts case-management guidance pages. None of these is a record of the Prosecutor's Office's own processing time.