FOIA 25-278: The office says it never tracked plea bargaining — then bills $23,146.66 for a 4,000-file review it says is already covered by another invoice

Watchdog Alerts

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

The office issued two invoices the same day, to the same requester, for what its own footnote says is one review. FOIA 25-277 is $34,720.00; FOIA 25-278 is $23,146.66. Together, $57,866.66, with $28,933.33 in deposits. On every line of the 25-278 itemization the office concedes that paying the 25-277 estimate 'would capture' these documents and make this estimate 'moot' — and billed for both anyway.
The office certified that it keeps no record of how many plea offers it makes, no record of how many cases resolve by plea, and no acceptance or rejection rates — then conceded in the same letter that 'the underlying data that would allow for the number to be derived is available and in the possession of the Prosecutor's Office.'
The one substantive production — 62 trials across four years — the office obtained by reading 'the internal calendar,' not by reviewing 4,000 files. Yet the itemization prices a 4,000-file review at $23,146.66. The review that was billed is not the review that was performed.
The office's own paragraph explains that 'the old case tracking system did not have data fields related to the tracking of plea-bargaining or Brady/Giglio,' and that plea detail is still not entered into ProsecutorByKarpel. The absence of plea data is a records-management choice, not a search result — and it is buried under a certificate of nonexistence.
The 'approximately 1000 cases/year' premise behind the invoice has now appeared in six responses in this archive — 25-215, 25-244, 25-254, 26-22, 25-277 and 25-278 — without ever being derived from a count, a query output or a docket total.
The Public Interest fee waiver section on the itemization is blank — for the second time in one day, for the same requester — and the packet omits the Fee Appeal Form and the text of MCL 15.240a.

Timing caveat. ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June 2024, and this request covers January 1, 2022 to the present, so roughly two and a half years of the window predate the system. Nothing on this page faults the office for how those earlier years were kept. The office's own paragraph is narrower and more useful: it says the old system never had a field for plea bargaining, so there was nothing to migrate, and that staff still do not enter plea detail into ProsecutorByKarpel. The absence of plea-offer data therefore runs continuously across the before and the after. That is a records-management fact the office volunteered, and it is the honest answer to a request the formal certificate answered with the word 'none.'

On November 25, 2025, a request went to the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office asking how the office plea bargains: how many plea offers it makes, how many cases resolve by plea, how many go to trial, what sentencing ranges it offers, what written policies govern the offers, and what performance metrics it keeps. It was faxed at 6:01:58 that evening, four pages, logged as received on November 26, and answered on December 18, 2025 — the same day, by the same coordinator, on the same form, as FOIA 25-277.

The answer is a document that grants almost nothing and admits almost everything. The office certified that it keeps no record of how many plea offers it makes, no record of how many cases resolve by plea, no record of acceptance or rejection rates, no policies, no metrics and no reports. It produced two blank forms and one number. The number is the count of cases that went to trial: 62 across 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The office got that number, it says, by reading “the internal calendar.” It did not get it by reviewing 4,000 files.

Then it billed for 4,000 files anyway. The itemization prices a review of “approximately 1000 cases/year (4 YEARS requested)” at $23,146.66, with an $11,573.33 deposit and a 180-day estimate. And on every one of its sixteen lines, a footnote concedes the point that makes the invoice strange: if the requester pays the estimate already issued for FOIA 25-277, “the documents in this request would be captured in that review, making this estimate moot.”

How to read this page

This page separates five things. First, what was asked and how the office answered each of the six numbered items. Second, the one thing it actually produced — a four-year trial count — and what that count does to the premise underneath the invoice. Third, the invoice itself, which this time is arithmetically correct, and which the office’s own footnote says is redundant with another invoice issued the same day. Fourth, the paragraph the office volunteered about its records migration, which is the most candid thing in the packet and which contradicts the formal certificate sitting above it. Fifth, the opinion, which is that 25-278 is the twin of 25-277, and that the twin billing is the finding.

Where the record supports criticism, the criticism is made and the document is cited. Where the record is silent, this page says so. The office’s letter is quoted at length because its own words carry the argument better than a summary would. Redacted copies of the response letter, the denial and appeal forms, the fee itemization with the extension notice, the request with its fax receipt, and the responsive forms are linked under Documents below.

Summary

The request had six numbered items in three groups, plus an unnumbered note. Group A asked for plea offer data and tracking: any database, log or report tracking the number of plea offers made, the number resolved by plea, the number proceeding to trial, and acceptance or rejection rates; and any export or data field from the case-management system showing plea offer details, charges before and after the offer, sentencing ranges offered, and the final plea outcome. Group B asked for sentencing ranges, offers and policies: written policies, manuals, SOPs, memoranda, checklists or training on standardized offers, sentencing ranges, enhancement and reduction guidelines, and mandatory minimums; and templates or form letters for plea offers or withdrawal notices. Group C asked for internal analytics and performance metrics: KPI reports on plea resolution rates, prosecutor performance, trial-to-plea ratios and timeliness; and statistical reports sent to external agencies such as the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, or grant entities. The period was January 1, 2022 to the present.

The office’s disposition, item by item, is a study in how much of a request can be answered with the word “none.” Of the six numbered items, one was granted in full, two were granted in part and denied in part, and three were denied outright. The two grants that matter are narrow: the count of cases that went to trial, and two blank forms. Everything else — the offer counts, the acceptance rates, the policies, the metrics, the reports to Lansing — the office says does not exist.

Three sentences carry the response. The first is the concession that sits inside the denial:

“The underlying data that would allow for the number to be derived is available and in the possession of the Prosecutor’s Office.”

The second is the admission about the case-management system, and it is the most important sentence in the packet:

“Prior to the transition to ProsecutorbyKarpel, the in-house case tracking system did not document plea offer details in anyway. That information was not transitioned from one system to the other, because it simply did not exist. Moreover, plea detail information is not entered directly into ProsectuorbyKarpel. (i.e. the information is NOT entered at this time by Prosecutor’s Office staff into a data field).”

The third is the footnote that appears on every line of the itemization:

“Please note, that this estimate applies to this FOIA Request, but that should payment be made on the estimate related to FOIA Request 25-277, the documents in this request would be captured in that review, making this estimate moot. This would only apply in the instance that the fee estimate was paid related to Request 25-277.”

Read together, those three sentences say something the office did not intend to say. The data exists, but the office does not capture it in a field, so answering the request would require building the dataset from correspondence rather than querying a system. That is a records-management fact, and it is a real answer. But it is not the answer the office gave in its certificate, and it is not the answer that justifies a $23,146.66 invoice for a review the office says is already covered by a different invoice.

What was asked, and how the office answered

The request is dated November 25, 2025. The TelNet fax portal receipt in the packet records the transmission at 6:01:58 p.m. on November 25, 2025, four pages received, to 906-789-5197. The office’s Notice of Denial records the request as received on 11/26/2025. The response letter is dated December 18, 2025, on Delta County Prosecutor’s Office letterhead naming Lauren M. Wickman as Prosecuting Attorney and Civil Counsel, Beth Wickwire as Chief Assistant Prosecutor and Deputy Civil Counsel, and Lauren Mattson as Assistant Prosecutor. It is signed by Emily DeSalvo as FOIA Coordinator, contact number 906-789-5100.

The letter states that “An extension was filed on December 3, 2025 by the Public Body.” Unlike FOIA 25-277, where the same sentence appeared and the notice was missing from the envelope, this time the notice is in the packet. It is at page 28, and it reads: “We are extending the date to respond to your FOIA request for no more than 10 business days.” That is a material difference between the two packets, and this page records it. On this request the office can show its extension. On the other, filed the same day by the same requester, it could not.

The six numbered items, as the request framed them, and the disposition on each:

FOIA 25-278 — the six numbered items and the disposition on each
Item	What was requested	Disposition
A(1)	Databases, logs or reports tracking the number of plea offers made, the number resolved by plea, the number proceeding to trial, and acceptance or rejection rates, January 1, 2022 to present.	Granted in part, denied in part. No record of offer counts, plea resolutions or acceptance rates exists; the underlying data does. The third element — cases proceeding to trial — was granted and produced as a four-year table.
A(2)	Any export, report or data field from the case-management system showing plea offer details, charges before and after the offer, sentencing ranges offered, and the final plea outcome.	Granted in part, denied in part. No such export, report or field exists. The office states that plea detail was never documented in the old system and is not entered into ProsecutorByKarpel.
B(3)	Policies, manuals, SOPs, memoranda, checklists or training materials on standardized plea offers, sentencing ranges, enhancement, reduction and withdrawal guidelines, and mandatory minimums.	Denied. No such policy or training material exists. The office notes this is identical to FOIA 25-178, which was appealed to the Delta County Board and upheld.
B(4)	Templates or form letters for plea offers or for notices withdrawing a plea offer.	Granted. Two responsive records produced: SCAO Form MC 414, Plea Agreement / Sentence Agreement, and a People’s Notification of Revocation of Plea Offer template.
C(5)	KPI reports on plea resolution rates, prosecutor performance tied to plea bargaining, trial-to-plea ratios, and timeliness or efficiency.	Denied. No such report exists, on any of the four measures.
C(6)	Statistical reports sent to external agencies — MPACC, DTMB, grant entities — concerning plea bargaining or case outcomes.	Denied. No such report exists.
Note	“Note on System Migration Delays”: all data exports, backups and legacy extractions; all documentation of migration status, including what data has not been imported and why; and any record indicating that plea-bargaining, Brady/Giglio or case-tracking fields were rendered inaccessible.	Granted in part, denied in part. All three sub-items denied as records that do not exist, each with a certificate. The office then volunteered a substantive paragraph describing the migration, which is discussed below.

Two things about the request itself matter for what follows. First, it was not a fishing expedition. It asked for the records a prosecutor’s office would keep if it managed plea bargaining as a process rather than a series of individual negotiations: offer counts, acceptance rates, a policy manual, a template. Second, it came with a written public-interest justification, a non-commercial certification, and a fee waiver request under MCL 15.234. The office’s itemization contains a section for recording the waiver decision. That section is blank — the same blank that appears on the 25-277 itemization issued the same day.

The paper trail

The packet is 39 pages. It contains a fifteen-page response letter, the Notice of Denial, two excerpts of MCL 15.240, a blank FOIA Appeal Form, the county’s written FOIA policies and forms notice, a seven-page Detailed Cost Itemization, a Notice to Extend Response Time, an intentionally blank page, the TelNet fax receipt, the four-page request, and the two responsive forms. It is the most complete packet in this archive: for the first time, the extension notice the letter describes is actually inside the envelope.

FOIA 25-278 — documents and dates as they appear in the packet
Page(s)	Document	What it establishes
1–15	Response letter, dated December 18, 2025	The item-by-item disposition, the trial count, the migration paragraph, the prior-request cross-references, and the fee.
16	Notice of Denial of FOIA Request	Request 25-278; date received 11/26/2025; date of notice 12/18/2025; received via fax; contact Emily DeSalvo, 906-789-5100.
17, 19	MCL 15.240 excerpts	The appeal right and the fee-shifting and punitive-damages provisions.
18	FOIA Appeal Form (blank)	The general appeal mechanism, unexecuted.
20, 30	County written FOIA policies and forms notice	The county’s general FOIA procedure.
21–27	Detailed Cost Itemization, seven pages	$16,533.33 locate, $6,613.33 redact, $23,146.66 subtotal, $11,573.33 deposit, 180-day estimate. Waiver section blank. The “moot” footnote on every line.
28	Notice to Extend Response Time	Ten business days, received via fax. Present in this packet, unlike 25-277.
29	Intentionally blank page	Nothing.
31–32	TelNet fax portal receipt	November 25, 2025, 6:01:58 p.m., four pages, to 906-789-5197.
33–36	The original request, four pages	Six numbered items in three groups; format of production; fee waiver; segregability; certification; certificate of service dated November 25, 2025.
37–38	SCAO Form MC 414, Plea Agreement / Sentence Agreement (Rev. 1/21)	The state plea-agreement form, produced as responsive to item B(4).
39	People’s Notification of Revocation of Plea Offer (template)	A blank template with a signature line for Lauren M. Wickman, P79974, produced as responsive to item B(4).

The packet is also the first in this archive to include the extension notice, and that deserves a note in the office’s favor. A ten-business-day extension from a November 26 receipt runs to roughly December 11; a five-business-day response period runs to December 4. The December 18 response is past both. But the extension notice in the packet is dated December 3, which is within the original five-day window, and the letter relies on it. Whether December 18 falls inside “no more than 10 business days” from December 3 is a question the packet does not resolve — ten business days from December 3 runs to about December 17, and the response is dated December 18. This page records the dates and does not resolve the one-day question, because the record does not.

The twin of 25-277

This is the finding that organizes everything else on this page. FOIA 25-278 is not an isolated request. It is the twin of FOIA 25-277, and the two should be read side by side.

Two requests, one requester, one day — and two invoices
Fact	FOIA 25-277	FOIA 25-278
Requester	Same individual	Same individual
Request dated	November 25, 2025	November 25, 2025
Faxed	5:52:24 p.m. and 7:59:42 p.m.	6:01:58 p.m.
Received	November 26, 2025	November 26, 2025
Response dated	December 18, 2025	December 18, 2025
Signed by	Emily DeSalvo, FOIA Coordinator	Emily DeSalvo, FOIA Coordinator
Subject	Annual statistical reports on clearance, backlog, conviction and acquittal rates	Plea bargaining practices, offers, policies and metrics
Core formula	No compilation exists; the underlying data does; exemption determined after review	No compilation exists; the underlying data does; exemption determined after review
Volume premise	“approximately 1000 cases/year (6 YEARS requested)”	“approximately 1000 cases/year (4 YEARS requested)”
Fee quoted	$34,720.00	$23,146.66
Deposit required	$17,360.00	$11,573.33
Waiver section	Blank	Blank
Extension notice in packet	No	Yes, page 28

Fourteen of those fifteen rows match. The one that does not — the extension notice — is a difference in the office’s favor on this packet and against it on the other. Everything else is the same: the same requester, the same filing day, the same receipt day, the same response day, the same coordinator, the same three-part formula, the same volume premise, the same blank waiver section. Two requests, filed four minutes apart, answered in two letters that are structurally interchangeable.

That consistency is itself the finding, and it cuts two ways. In the office’s favor, it shows that the office treats similar requests similarly, which is what a FOIA process should do. Against the office, it shows that the “no compilation exists, but the data does, and the exemption is determined after you pay” formula is not a reasoned response to a particular request. It is a template. The same sentences answer a request about clearance rates and a request about plea offers, because the sentences were written before either request arrived. A template applied to two different subjects is not a determination about either.

And then there is the money. Two invoices, issued the same day, to the same requester, for what the office itself says is one review:

The combined demand for two requests filed four minutes apart
Request	Fee quoted	Deposit required	Files priced
FOIA 25-277	$34,720.00	$17,360.00	6,000
FOIA 25-278	$23,146.66	$11,573.33	4,000
Combined	$57,866.66	$28,933.33	10,000 priced, one review

The 25-278 itemization does not hide this. On every one of its sixteen lines, footnotes 4, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 repeat the same concession: if the 25-277 estimate is paid, “the documents in this request would be captured in that review, making this estimate moot.” The office knows the two requests overlap. It says so, six times, in the document that bills for both. And it issued both anyway, the same day, each with its own deposit requirement, each with its own 180-day clock.

What a requester is left holding is two envelopes that each say the other one covers the work. Pay both and you have paid twice for one review. Pay neither and you have paid nothing and received nothing. Pay one and the office has said, in writing, that the other is moot — but it has not said which one to pay, or that paying one discharges the other. The redundancy is disclosed and then left standing.

The one thing granted: sixty-two trials

Item A(1) asked for the number of cases that proceed to trial. That element the office granted. It produced a table, and it explained where the numbers came from: “following a review of the internal calendar of the Prosecutor’s Office.” Not a review of 4,000 files. A review of the calendar.

The table counts trials by court and year. The office defined what it counted: “The number of trials includes any jury trials in District, Circuit or Probate Court, any Abuse/Neglect Proceedings categorized as trials, or any entries of pleas as charged on the day of trial.” A footnote fixes the cutoff: “Trials through December 18, 2025.”

Figure 1 · Interactive

Trials by court and year, 2022–2025, as the office counted them

Sixty-two trials across four years and three courts, drawn from “the internal calendar.” Select a bar to read the count and what it includes.

District · 2022 1 One trial in District Court in 2022. District Court handles misdemeanors and the felony preliminary examination stage, so a “trial” here is a misdemeanor trial or a contested preliminary examination counted as one.

District · 2023 6 Six District Court trials in 2023, the highest District figure in the four years.

District · 2024 5 Five District Court trials in 2024, the year ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June.

District · 2025 6 Six District Court trials through December 18, 2025.

Probate · 2022 10 Ten Probate Court trials in 2022, the highest single figure in the table. The office’s definition includes Abuse/Neglect Proceedings “categorized as trials,” which is what most of these are.

Probate · 2023 9 Nine Probate Court trials in 2023, again largely abuse and neglect proceedings counted as trials.

Probate · 2024 3 Three Probate Court trials in 2024, a sharp drop from the two prior years.

Probate · 2025 3 Three Probate Court trials through December 18, 2025.

Circuit · 2022 7 Seven Circuit Court trials in 2022. Circuit Court handles felonies, so these are the felony jury trials in the table.

Circuit · 2023 4 Four Circuit Court trials in 2023.

Circuit · 2024 4 Four Circuit Court trials in 2024.

Circuit · 2025 4 Four Circuit Court trials through December 18, 2025.

2022 total18

2023 total19

2024 total12

2025 total13

Four-year total62

Source: Response letter of December 18, 2025 to FOIA 25-278, table at pages 4–5 of the packet, read from a 300 dpi render and verified against a second 400 dpi pass. The office states the counts come from “a review of the internal calendar of the Prosecutor’s Office” and that they include “any jury trials in District, Circuit or Probate Court, any Abuse/Neglect Proceedings categorized as trials, or any entries of pleas as charged on the day of trial,” through December 18, 2025. Totals computed from the printed figures.

Figure 1. Sixty-two trials across four years. The office produced this count from its calendar, not from a review of 4,000 case files — which is the point that matters most on this page.

Read the table as a whole and a picture emerges that the office did not draw. Trials fell from 18 in 2022 and 19 in 2023 to 12 in 2024 and 13 in 2025. The drop is almost entirely in Probate Court, where abuse and neglect trials went from ten and nine to three and three. Circuit felony trials fell from seven to four and held there. District misdemeanor trials rose from one to six and held there. Over four years the office took 62 cases to trial while, by its own account, handling roughly 1,000 cases a year — which is to say roughly 4,000 cases in the period, and 62 trials, or about one and a half percent.

That ratio is the answer to a question the office said it could not answer. Item C(5) asked for trial-to-plea ratios. The office denied it as a report that does not exist. But the numerator is in the table the office produced, and the denominator is the case volume the office asserts on its own itemization. A requester who wanted the trial-to-plea ratio could compute it from two documents the office issued the same day. The office declined to compute it, and then billed $23,146.66 for a review that would, on its own description, produce the very numbers it had already put in a table.

The invoice, which this time is arithmetically correct

This page has criticized the office’s fee arithmetic before. In FOIA 25-254 the criticism was that the office treated minutes as quarter hours and inflated its demand fifteenfold. That criticism does not apply here. On this itemization the multiplication is right, and saying so is part of keeping an honest record.

FOIA 25-278 — Detailed Cost Itemization, as printed
Line	Item	Basis	Amount
1	Employee labor to locate	4,000 files × 10 minutes = 2,666.66 quarter-hour increments × $6.20	$16,533.33
2	Employee labor to review and separate	None charged	$0.00
3a	Employee labor to redact	4,000 files × 4 minutes = 1,066.66 increments × $6.20	$6,613.33
3b	Contract labor for redaction	None	$0.00
4	Copying	None charged	$0.00
5	Mailing	None	$0.00
	Subtotal		$23,146.66
	Good-faith deposit (50%)		$11,573.33
	Estimated time to complete after deposit		180 days

The rate is disclosed and it is correct. The hourly wage with fringe benefits is $24.82, billed at $6.20 per quarter-hour increment, which is $24.82 divided by four and rounded down. The deposit is exactly half the subtotal, as MCL 15.234(3) permits. Every line computes from its stated basis. An archive that criticizes fee arithmetic has to say so when the arithmetic is right, and here it is right.

The handwritten justifications are also more specific than in earlier packets. For line 1: “approximately 1000 cases/year (4 YEARS requested) to locate the request in this particular instance. Approximately 10 minutes per file.” For line 3a: “information of a personal nature that could clearly constitute a violation of an individual’s privacy (MCL 15.243(1)(a)). Will appear on all documents located. Approximately 4 minutes per file.”

Two things about those justifications deserve scrutiny. The first is the redaction rationale. Line 3a asserts that personal information “will appear on all documents located” — a categorical claim about 4,000 files the office has not yet examined, since the redaction is to be performed after the deposit clears. An exemption determination made before the review it depends on is not a determination; it is a prediction. And it is a prediction about a request whose granted portion produced two blank forms and a table of counts, none of which contains a single personal identifier. The office is charging $6,613.33 to redact personal information from documents that, on its own description of what it holds, may not contain any.

The second is the volume. Four thousand files is the premise of the entire invoice, and it is asserted, not counted. That is the subject of the next section.

Four thousand files, sixty-two trials

The invoice prices a review of 4,000 files. The office derived that figure from “approximately 1000 cases/year” over four years. Set it beside what the same response actually produced.

To answer item A(1)’s trial question, the office did not review 4,000 files. It read “the internal calendar.” To answer item B(4)’s template question, it did not review 4,000 files. It pulled two forms. To answer items A(2), B(3), C(5), C(6) and the migration note, it did not review 4,000 files. It certified that the records do not exist. Every part of the response that was actually answered was answered from sources other than a file-by-file review: a calendar, a forms folder, and a certificate. The 4,000-file review is priced but never performed, because on the office’s own account it was never necessary.

This is the sixth appearance in this archive of the “approximately 1,000 cases per year” figure. It appears in FOIA 25-215, in 25-244, in 25-254 (where it was paired with a units error that inflated the demand fifteenfold), in 26-22, in 25-277, and now here. In none of those six responses does the office show a count, a query output, a docket total or an annual report behind the number. It is asserted, multiplied, and billed.

The 25-278 packet makes the gap visible in a way the earlier packets did not, because it puts the premise and the product in the same envelope. The premise is 4,000 files at ten minutes to locate and four to redact, for $23,146.66. The product is 62 trials, two blank forms, and six certificates of nonexistence. The office priced a mountain and delivered a page.

The paragraph the office volunteered

The most interesting part of this response is the part the office did not have to write. The “Note on System Migration Delays” asked for records about the migration to ProsecutorByKarpel: exports, backups, documentation of what had not been imported and why, and any record showing that plea-bargaining, Brady/Giglio or case-tracking fields had been rendered inaccessible. All three sub-items were denied as records that do not exist, each with a formal certificate. A footnote adds: “Please note this was confirmed with the IT Department.”

Then, below the certificates, the office wrote a paragraph that answers the substance of the question anyway:

“The data transition or migration was completed in June 2024. The issue is not with the data being migrated, but with the information from one system not matching with all data fields or areas in the new system. Moreover, there are more data fields available in ProsecutorbyKarpel than in the previous case management system. … There are still mistakes and issues being found with the migrated information on nearly a weekly basis due to the age of the case at issue and what information was originally inputted into the old system.”

And then the sentence that explains why the plea data does not exist:

“The old case tracking system did not have data fields related to the tracking of plea-bargaining or Brady/Giglio. This information was never inputted into that system, so there was no information to migrate.”

That is a real answer, and it is a better answer than the certificate. It says: the office never tracked plea bargaining as data. Not before Karpel, not after. The old system had no field for it, so nothing was migrated; the new system has fields, but staff do not enter plea detail into them. The reason there is no record of how many plea offers the office makes is not that the record is exempt. It is that the office never made one. That is a records-management fact, and it is the kind of fact a FOIA response is supposed to surface.

The problem is that the office buried it under a certificate of nonexistence. The certificate says the records do not exist, which is true and which closes the request. The paragraph says why they do not exist, which is the useful part, and it is offered as an aside. A requester reading only the disposition would conclude that the office searched and found nothing. A requester reading the paragraph would conclude that the office never kept the thing in the first place — which is a different and more consequential finding, because it means the absence is a design choice about what to record, not an accident of search.

There is also a tension with the June 2024 date. ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June 2024, and the office says the migration was completed then. The request period is January 1, 2022 to present, so roughly two and a half years of the window predate the system. This page does not fault the office for how those earlier years were kept; the system did not exist. But the office’s own paragraph says that even in the new system, plea detail is not entered into a field. So the request period spans a before, in which the data was never captured, and an after, in which the capability exists but is unused. The absence is continuous across both.

A denial form, and an appeal nobody was told how to file

Page 16 is the state-issued Notice of Denial form. It records request number 25-278, date received 11/26/2025, date of notice 12/18/2025, received via fax, contact Emily DeSalvo at 906-789-5100. In the field for the records requested it refers to the attached request.

The form’s reason boxes are printed with marks that appear, on pixel inspection, in both the 25-277 and 25-278 packets identically — which means the marks are a pre-printed artifact of the form and not a record of which reasons the office selected. This page therefore does not assert which boxes are checked. What the form does say in its text is more useful than the boxes: the redaction reason describes the personal information to be removed as “defendant names, victim or witness names, addresses, dates of births, telephone numbers, etc,” and states that “any determination of the exact exemptions would be conducted after payment of the fee estimate.”

That sentence is the clearest statement in the packet of how the office sequences its work. The exemption determination comes after payment. The office does not know, when it issues the invoice, what it will redact or why. It knows only that it will redact something, at four minutes a file, for $6,613.33. A requester is asked to pay for a determination that has not been made, on documents that have not been reviewed, under an exemption that has not been applied.

The appeal notice is standard and it is reproduced twice. “If you disagree with this decision, you may submit an appeal to the chairperson of the Delta County Board of Commissioners, or seek judicial review in the Delta County Circuit Court,” with the reminder that a court may award punitive damages of $1,000.00. What the packet does not include is the Fee Appeal Form or the text of MCL 15.240a — the same omission as in 25-277. A requester who wanted to appeal the $23,146.66 fee had the general appeal form and no fee-specific mechanism, in a packet that is otherwise the most complete in this archive.

The waiver section, blank again

The request asked for a fee waiver under MCL 15.234(1), on public-interest grounds, with a written justification and a non-commercial certification. The county’s itemization has a section for recording the waiver decision. It is blank. So is the identical section on the 25-277 itemization issued the same day.

A blank section is not a denial with reasons. It is the absence of a decision. Under MCL 15.234(7) a public body may waive or reduce a fee where the request is in the public interest and not primarily commercial, and the statute contemplates that the body will make and record that determination. An office that leaves the section blank has neither granted nor denied the waiver; it has simply not addressed it, and the full fee stands by default. That is the same practice this archive has recorded in every fee packet the office has issued, and it is now documented twice on the same day for the same requester.

The opinion: two invoices for one review

Here is the finding this page exists to record. FOIA 25-277 and FOIA 25-278 are the same request in two costumes. They were filed by the same person four minutes apart on the same evening. They were received the same day. They were answered the same day, by the same coordinator, with letters built from the same sentences. They multiply the same volume premise — approximately 1,000 cases a year — by the same per-file times, on the same form, at the same rate. And they were billed separately: $34,720.00 and $23,146.66, $57,866.66 together, $28,933.33 in deposits.

The office’s own footnote says this should not have happened. Six times, on sixteen lines, the 25-278 itemization concedes that paying the 25-277 estimate “would capture” the 25-278 documents and make the second estimate “moot.” The office knew the two requests overlapped. It wrote the overlap into the invoice. And it issued both invoices anyway, each with its own deposit, each with its own 180-day clock, each standing on its own as a demand the requester had to satisfy or abandon.

That is the move, and it is a different move from the ones this archive has documented before. In earlier packets the office recharacterized a request as something more expensive and let the deposit do the refusing. Here the office did that twice, for two requests that are one request, and then disclosed in writing that one payment would cover both — without telling the requester which payment, or treating either as satisfying the other. A requester facing $28,933.33 in deposits for work the office says is one review has been handed a reason to walk away that is larger than either invoice alone. The redundancy is not a discount. It is a second wall.

The trial table sharpens the point. The one substantive thing the office produced — 62 trials over four years — it produced from a calendar, in what must have been a short search, without reviewing 4,000 files. That is the answer to a question the office said would cost $23,146.66 to answer. The office found it for free, because the calendar already existed. Which means the 4,000-file review priced on the itemization was never the method by which this request would be answered. It was the method by which the request would be priced. Those are not the same thing, and the difference between them is $23,146.66.

And the volume premise underneath it all is the same premise this archive has now recorded six times. Approximately 1,000 cases a year, asserted, never counted. In 25-254 the premise was hidden behind a units error. Here the arithmetic is clean and the premise is exposed, and the exposure shows what the premise is for: it is the multiplier that converts a request the office does not want to answer into an invoice large enough that the requester will stop asking. Sixty-two trials is what the office actually had. Four thousand files is what it charged to look for them.

None of this requires imputing bad faith. It requires only noting that the office controls the characterization of the work, the estimate of its cost, and the decision whether to waive the cost; that it has now issued two invoices for one review and said so in writing; and that it has left the waiver section blank on both. A process in which one party sets the scope, sets the price twice, records no reasons, and discloses the redundancy without resolving it is a process that cannot be reviewed. That is the transparency problem this archive documents, and 25-278 is its clearest instance yet — not because the arithmetic is wrong, but because the arithmetic is right and the invoice is still for work the office did not do.

What the office got right

A record that only counts failures is not a record, and this response does several things properly — more than most in this archive.

The extension notice is in the packet. For the first time, the office produced the document its letter describes. That is a real improvement over 25-277, where the same sentence appeared and the notice was missing, and it is worth saying plainly.

The trial count was produced, and it was produced honestly. The office could have denied item A(1) in full, as it denied so much else. Instead it granted the trial element, produced a four-year table by court, defined what it counted, and fixed the cutoff date. That is a genuine production, and it is the reason this page can make the argument it makes.

The migration paragraph is candid. The office did not have to explain that the old system never tracked plea bargaining, or that staff do not enter plea detail into Karpel, or that migration errors are still surfacing weekly. It volunteered all of it. That paragraph is the most useful thing in the packet, and it is the office’s own words.

The rate is disclosed and the arithmetic is correct. $24.82 an hour with fringe, $6.20 per quarter hour, with the conversion shown. The deposit is exactly half, as the statute permits. In an archive where fee forms often omit the rate entirely, that is what made the invoice checkable at all.

The prior-request cross-references are disclosed rather than concealed. The response names 25-94, 25-136 and 25-178, and it tells the requester that 25-178 was appealed and the denial upheld. Naming the prior requests lets a requester see what ground has been covered. The problem is that the ground covered does not include the plea-offer data this request asked for, but the disclosure itself is to the office’s credit.

The criticism on this page is therefore narrow and specific. It is not that the office refused to produce plea data. It is that the office produced a certificate, a calendar count and two blank forms, priced a 4,000-file review it did not perform, issued a second invoice its own footnote calls moot, and left the waiver blank — twice, on the same day, for the same requester.

How this compares to the rest of the archive

At $23,146.66, this is the fourth-largest fee demand in the archive, behind 25-254 and 25-244 at $74,520.00 each and 25-194 at $63,028.80. It is ahead of 25-277 at $34,720.00 only when the two are combined: together they are $57,866.66, which would be the second-largest demand in the archive if treated as one.

What distinguishes 25-278 is not the size but the pairing. Every other fee packet in this archive stands alone. This one cannot be read without the packet issued beside it, because the two are the same review billed twice. That is a new fact in the record, and it is the fact that makes the volume premise visible. When one request is priced at $34,720.00 for 6,000 files and another at $23,146.66 for 4,000 files, and the office says the second is subsumed by the first, the arithmetic of the two invoices together — 10,000 files priced, 62 trials produced — is the arithmetic of a fee schedule that does not track the work.

On the substance, this is the first request in the archive that asked the office how it plea bargains, and the answer is that the office does not record it. Earlier requests asked for charging decisions, backlog information, statistical material provided to the Board, and annual reports. This one asked for the internal machinery of plea negotiation — offers, acceptances, ranges, policies, metrics — and the office answered that none of it is captured. That is a finding about how the office manages its own core function, and the office made it about itself, in a paragraph it did not have to write.

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 missing. They are set out so a reader can check the analysis against the text rather than against this page’s summary of it.