Illustration for FOIA 26-21: The amendment that corrected nothing it admitted
FOIA 26-21 · Denied as a compilation — no count produced; fee of $9,548.00 quoted for underlying files; amended response revised the volume figure without explanation

On January 30, 2026, a requester faxed the Delta County Prosecutor's Office a one-page request for a single number: the total number of criminal convictions the office secured between the prosecutor's election date and December 31, 2025. The request asked for aggregate data only, no individual case information, a waiver of fees under MCL 15.234, and an itemized estimate before any work began.

Six days later, on February 5, 2026, the office answered. The letter is headed “GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART.” No count was produced. The office certified that no document containing the total exists, cited the no-duty-to-create provision at MCL 15.233(5), issued a formal certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1), and then offered to sell the requester the underlying files so he could compile the total himself. The price was $9,548.00, the deposit was $4,774.00, and the delivery estimate was 270 days.

Seven days after that, on February 12, 2026, the office sent a second letter. It is titled an amendment. It changes one thing. Where the original letter said the office processes “approximately 1,500 files per year (2023, 2024, 2025),” the amended letter says “approximately 1,100 files per year (2023, 2024, 2025).” Nothing else changed — not the denial, not the statute, not the certificate, not the fee, not the deposit, not the 270 days, not the appeal paragraph, and not even the two typographical errors that appear in both versions. It is a silent correction of a number that, in the original letter, contradicted the office's own attached invoice by $3,472.00. The office fixed the number and said nothing about having fixed it.

How to read this page

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

Summary

FOIA 26-21 is one of three statistical requests faxed to the office on the same day — 26-20, 26-21, and 26-22 — each asking for a different aggregate figure about the office's criminal work. This one asked for a count of convictions. The sibling request 26-22 asked for a conviction success rate. A third asked for a related total. All three were answered within days, all three were certified as producing no existing document, and all three were met with a fee quote built on the same underlying estimate of case volume.

Four numbers organize this file. 1,500 is the number of files per year the original letter used to justify its price. 1,100 is the number the amended letter substituted. $9,548.00 is the fee the office actually quoted, and it is the fee that corresponds to 1,100 files per year, not 1,500. Zero is the number of pages of responsive records produced. The request asked for one number and received none; the office instead priced a production of underlying case files that the request never asked for, and then quietly revised the volume figure that justified the price.

The denial of the count itself may well be lawful. A total number of convictions is a calculation, not a document, and Michigan's Freedom of Information Act does not require a public body to create a record it has never created. That part of the file deserves a fair reading, and this page gives it one. The amendment is a different matter. A correction that changes a number without acknowledging that the earlier number was wrong, and without explaining how it was arrived at or why it changed, is not a correction the public can evaluate. This page examines what the amendment did, what it did not do, and why the difference matters.

What was requested

The request is dated January 30, 2026, and was transmitted by fax at 12:29:53 p.m. Eastern that day; the office's fax notifications place receipt the same afternoon, and the office's own Notice of Denial records a received date of 02/02/2026, the next business day. The operative text asked for:

“The total number of criminal convictions secured by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office from the prosecutor's election date through December 31, 2025. This request seeks only aggregate numerical data. No individual case information is requested.”

Four features of the request matter to what followed. First, it asked for a count, not a rate and not a case list — the simplest possible aggregate. Second, it asked only for what the office already has, expressly disclaiming any request for individual case information. Third, it asked for a fee waiver under MCL 15.234 and for an itemized estimate before processing, so that the requester could decide whether to proceed. Fourth, it fixed the start date by reference to the prosecutor's election, and the office resolved that ambiguity itself: footnote 1 in both the original and amended letters states that “Prosecutor Wickman was elected in November 2022 General Election, and was sworn in for her term starting on January 1, 2023.” The effective window is therefore January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 — three calendar years.

What the office answered

The February 5 letter makes four moves in sequence. It finds the request “GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART.” It denies the count on the ground that no aggregate statistical document exists and that compiling one would require creating a new record, invoking MCL 15.233(5), the provision relieving a public body of any duty to make a compilation, summary, or new record. It issues a formal certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1), the provision allowing a public body to certify that a requested record does not exist under its procedures and guidelines. And it offers an alternative: the total “could be provided in the form of the underlying information that would allow for your own compiling.”

That alternative is the part that generates the fee. The office did not produce the underlying information; it priced the work of assembling it. The attached itemization estimates the review of approximately 1,100 files per year across three years, at three minutes per file for one line of work and four minutes per file for a second, at a charge of $6.20 per quarter hour, arriving at a subtotal of $9,548.00 and a 50 percent deposit of $4,774.00, with a delivery estimate of 270 days.

The timing of the February 5 letter is correct. Under MCL 15.235(1), a public body must respond to a request within five business days of receipt, and may extend that period by ten business days under MCL 15.235(2) by notifying the requester. The request was faxed January 30 (a Friday) and deemed received February 2 (a Monday); February 5 is the third business day after receipt. No extension was needed and none was taken. The office answered inside the statutory window, and this page does not suggest otherwise.

The amendment, line by line

The February 12 letter is two pages long. It is captioned as an amendment to the February 5 response and bears a new date. The table below compares the two letters paragraph by paragraph. Only three things differ: the date, the caption, and the volume figure. Everything else — including the two typographical errors — is identical.

What the amendment changed, and what it did not
Element of the letterFebruary 5 originalFebruary 12 amendmentChanged?
Date of letterFebruary 5, 2026February 12, 2026Yes
CaptionResponse to FOIA Request 26-21Amended Response to FOIA Request 26-21Yes
Disposition lineGRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PARTGRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PARTNo
Statutory basis for denialMCL 15.233(5)MCL 15.233(5)No
Certificate of nonexistenceMCL 15.233(1)MCL 15.233(1)No
Files-per-year figureapproximately 1,500 files per yearapproximately 1,100 files per yearYes
Years covered(2023, 2024, 2025)(2023, 2024, 2025)No
Fee quoted$9,548.00$9,548.00No
Deposit required$4,774.00$4,774.00No
Delivery estimate270 days270 daysNo
Footnote 1 (election date)January 1, 2023January 1, 2023No
Footnote 2 (shared itemization)Names 25-21 and 25-22Names 25-21 and 25-22No
Appeal paragraphPresentPresentNo
Typo: “great than fifty dollars”PresentPresentNo
Typo: “the responsible, nonexempt public records”PresentPresentNo

The two surviving typographical errors are the strongest evidence of how the amendment was produced. If the letter had been redrafted — if someone had sat down and reconsidered what the February 5 letter said — the errors would most likely have been caught. Instead, both errors appear identically in both versions, and the only substantive change is a single figure. That is the signature of a find-and-replace: the drafter opened the original, changed “1,500” to “1,100,” changed the date and the caption, and saved. The office corrected a number without re-reading the letter it was correcting.

Michigan's Freedom of Information Act provides no mechanism for an “amended response.” MCL 15.235 sets the deadline for a response and the procedure for an extension; it does not authorize a public body to revise a determination after the fact. Whether the February 5 letter or the February 12 letter is the operative determination is therefore an open question the statute does not answer. If the February 5 letter controls, the fee it quoted was internally inconsistent with its own justification. If the February 12 letter controls, the office has effectively reopened a response it had already issued, without explaining what was wrong with the first one or what happened to the seven days in between.

The arithmetic the amendment exposed

The original letter's volume figure and the original letter's fee did not agree. The itemization attached to both letters prices the work at three minutes per file for one line and four minutes per file for a second, at $6.20 per quarter hour. Run those rates against the original letter's 1,500 files per year and the fee should have been far higher than the one quoted.

The fee implied by 1,500 files per year versus the fee actually quoted
InputAt 1,500 files/year (original letter)At 1,100 files/year (amended letter)
Files per year1,5001,100
Years covered33
Total files4,5003,300
Line 1: minutes per file33
Line 1: quarter hours (total)1,500 × 3 × 3 ÷ 15 = 9001,100 × 3 × 3 ÷ 15 = 660
Line 1: charge at $6.20$5,580.00$4,092.00
Line 3a: minutes per file44
Line 3a: quarter hours (total)1,500 × 3 × 4 ÷ 15 = 1,2001,100 × 3 × 4 ÷ 15 = 880
Line 3a: charge at $6.20$7,440.00$5,456.00
Subtotal$13,020.00$9,548.00
Deposit at 50 percent$6,510.00$4,774.00

Three conclusions follow. First, the February 5 letter misdescribed its own attachment. At the 1,500 files per year the letter stated, the itemization's own rates produce a subtotal of $13,020.00 and a deposit of $6,510.00. The letter quoted $9,548.00 and $4,774.00. The gap is $3,472.00 in the subtotal and $1,736.00 in the deposit.

Second, the amendment resolved the discrepancy toward the invoice. By substituting 1,100 files per year, the February 12 letter made the stated volume agree with the fee that had already been quoted. The fee did not change; the justification for the fee changed to match it.

Third, the office's stated rationale for charging was volume — the number of files that would have to be reviewed. If volume is the driver, then a 27 percent reduction in volume should have moved the price. It did not. The fee stayed at $9,548.00 through both letters. Either the fee was never actually computed from the volume, or the volume figure was never the real basis for the charge. The record does not say which.

The itemization

The detailed cost itemization attached to both letters is seven pages long. Its operative lines are reproduced below. The arithmetic within the itemization is internally coherent for 3,300 files: the quarter-hour counts, the $6.20 rate, the subtotal, and the 50 percent deposit all reconcile.

Detailed cost itemization, operative lines
LineBasisQuarter hoursRateCharge
1Review of approximately 1,100 files/year, 3 minutes each660$6.20$4,092.00
3aReview of approximately 1,100 files/year, 4 minutes each (two documents/file)880$6.20$5,456.00
—Subtotal fees——$9,548.00
—Deposit required (50 percent)——$4,774.00
—Estimated delivery——270 days
—Amount paid to date——$0.00
—Hourly wage with fringe——$24.82
—Charge per quarter hour——$6.20
—Fee waiver requested——Blank
—After waiver——Blank

The arithmetic is sound. What the itemization does not do is explain the wage line. Under MCL 15.234(2), a public body may charge for labor at the hourly rate — including fringe benefits — of the lowest-paid employee capable of performing the task. Under MCL 15.234(1), the charge may not exceed the actual cost of the work. The itemization prints an hourly wage with fringe of $24.82 and a charge per quarter hour of $6.20. Twenty-four dollars and eighty-two cents divided by four is $6.205, which rounds to $6.21, not $6.20. The difference is a fraction of a cent per quarter hour, immaterial in dollars, but it illustrates that the rate was rounded rather than derived. More importantly, the itemization does not identify which employee classification the $24.82 figure represents, whether that classification is the lowest-paid capable of the task, or how the fringe rate was computed.

The footnote that names two requests

Footnote 2 of the itemization reads, verbatim:

“Please note that this FOIA Fee Itemization is identical to the FOIA Fee Itemization related to FOIA Request 25-21. Should a deposit be received on either the Fee Itemization for FOIA Request 25-21 or FOIA Request 25-22, it would be considered applicable to both FOIA Request 25-21 and FOIA Request 25-22.”

Two things about this footnote are documented facts, not interpretation. First, it names requests 25-21 and 25-22. Neither number appears in this archive. The requests that were actually filed and answered are 26-21 and 26-22. The footnote either transposed the year or refers to a pair of earlier requests that are not documented here. Second, the footnote states in writing that a single itemization serves two different requests, and that a deposit on one is applicable to both.

The consequence is that the office has priced two different requests with one invoice. Request 26-21 asked for a count of convictions; request 26-22 asked for a conviction success rate. Those are different questions requiring different work. Yet the office attached an identical itemization to both and provided that a deposit on either would satisfy both. Under MCL 15.234(13) and MCL 15.240a(8), a deposit is treated as a fee for purposes of the act, which means the accounting of what was charged for which request is not a clerical detail — it determines what the requester is deemed to have paid for. Pooling two requests into one invoice leaves that accounting unresolved.

The waiver that was never decided

The request asked for a waiver of fees under MCL 15.234. Both the original and the amended letters are silent on the waiver. The itemization contains a fee-waiver section with two checkboxes and an “After Waiver: $____” line, and all of it is blank. This is the third consecutive file from this requester — 26-20, 26-21, and 26-22 — in which a waiver was requested and left undecided.

Under MCL 15.234(9), a public body may waive or reduce a fee if a waiver would be in the public interest because the information is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of government operations and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester. The statute does not require a waiver. It does contemplate a decision. A blank waiver section is not a denial of the waiver, and it is not a grant; it is the absence of a determination, which leaves the requester unable to know whether the fee he is being asked to deposit is the fee he actually owes.

The Notice of Denial

The packet includes a Notice of Denial form. It records Request No. 26-21, a Date Received of 02/02/2026, and a Date of This Notice of 02/05/2026. It identifies a contact, Emily DeSalvo, at 906-789-5100. The form lists pre-printed reasons for denial, and the reasons shown on the form are the county's standard list rather than request-specific findings; this page does not assert which boxes were checked, because the pre-printed form does not reliably indicate that.

Two features of the form are worth noting. Item 2 of the form is coherent with the letter: the record does not exist in the form requested. Item 3 anticipates a redaction — it addresses records that will be redacted — but no redaction ever occurred, because no records were produced. The form thus describes a production that did not happen. Separately, the citation to MCL 15.243(1)(a) on the form refers to a discretionary exemption; a discretionary exemption invoked without explanation of how it applies to this request is difficult for a requester to challenge.

The timeline

Dates in the record
DateEvent
January 30, 2026Request faxed at 12:29:53 p.m. Eastern
February 2, 2026Office records receipt (Notice of Denial)
February 5, 2026Original response letter and Notice of Denial
February 12, 2026Amended response letter
March 22, 202630 days after February 5 — appeal window if the original controls
April 8, 202630 days after February 12 — appeal window if the amendment controls
August 4, 2026180 days after February 5 — disclosure deadline if the original controls
August 11, 2026180 days after February 12 — disclosure deadline if the amendment controls
—270 days from deposit — delivery estimate, unexplained
—Deposit never paid; no records produced

The amendment creates two sets of deadlines because it is unclear which letter is the operative determination. Under MCL 15.240, a requester may appeal a denial within 30 days of the notice of denial. If the February 5 letter controls, the appeal window closed March 22, 2026. If the February 12 amendment controls, it closed April 8, 2026. The same ambiguity affects the disclosure deadline under MCL 15.240(6), which gives a public body 180 days after the appeal period to produce records if it has not done so. The requester should not have to guess which date governs.

What the record shows

Eight concerns are documented in the file. Each is stated as the record supports it, without asserting more than the record shows.

1. The amendment corrected a number without acknowledging an error. The February 12 letter changes 1,500 to 1,100 and says nothing about why. A correction that does not admit that the earlier figure was wrong leaves the public unable to evaluate either figure.

2. The original letter contradicted its own attachment by $3,472.00. At the 1,500 files per year the February 5 letter stated, the itemization's own rates produce $13,020.00, not the $9,548.00 quoted. The discrepancy is internal to the office's own documents.

3. The fee did not move when the volume did. The office justified the charge by volume. Volume fell 27 percent between the two letters; the fee did not change.

4. One invoice served two different requests. Footnote 2 states that a single itemization covers both 26-21 and 26-22 and that a deposit on one applies to both, though the two requests ask different questions.

5. The footnote names request numbers not in this archive. Footnote 2 refers to 25-21 and 25-22; the requests on file are 26-21 and 26-22.

6. The waiver was never decided. A waiver was requested under MCL 15.234; both letters are silent and the itemization's waiver section is blank.

7. The denial form anticipates a redaction that never occurred. Item 3 of the Notice of Denial addresses redaction, but no records were produced and no redaction took place.

8. The deposit notice omits the abandonment date. Under MCL 15.234(13), a requester who does not pay a deposit may be treated as having abandoned the request after a specified period. The itemization does not state that date, so the requester cannot know when his request will be deemed abandoned.

Two further points complete the picture. The 270-day delivery estimate is stated without explanation; no basis for it appears in the itemization. And four of the seventeen pages in the original packet are boilerplate — two copies of the MCL 15.240 excerpt, a blank appeal form, and a written-policies notice — which is not improper, but which means the substantive content of the packet is concentrated in a handful of pages.

The amendment that corrected nothing it admitted

The most defensible reading of the February 12 letter is that it was an honest correction. Someone at the office noticed that the volume figure in the February 5 letter did not match the volume figure the fee was built on, and fixed it. That reading deserves to be stated plainly, because the record supports it: the office amended the letter without being asked, within a week, and the amendment moved the stated volume toward the number the invoice actually used. An office that wanted to hide the discrepancy could simply have left the letter alone.

But an adequate correction would have done more than change a number. It would have said what was corrected, why the earlier figure was wrong, and what the correct figure is based on. The February 12 letter does none of these things. It presents itself as an amendment and then behaves like a find-and-replace: the date and caption change, one figure changes, and the two typographical errors that appear in the original appear identically in the amendment. A reader who did not have both letters side by side would never know that anything had been corrected at all. That is not transparency. It is a correction that conceals the fact of correction.

The deeper problem is what the amendment did not address. The office's stated reason for charging $9,548.00 was the volume of files that would have to be reviewed. If that is true, then reducing the volume by 27 percent should have reduced the price. It did not. The fee stayed exactly where it was. That tells us one of two things: either the fee was never actually computed from the volume, in which case the volume figure was decoration; or the volume figure was never the real basis for the charge, in which case the stated rationale was not the real rationale. Either way, the amendment fixed the appearance of the arithmetic without touching the substance of the fee.

And the amendment addressed none of the four issues that go to the lawfulness of the response. It did not decide the fee waiver. It did not explain the 270-day delivery estimate. It did not untangle the shared invoice that names two requests and treats a deposit on one as payment for both. It did not correct the footnote that refers to request numbers that do not exist. Those are the issues a requester would need resolved in order to know what he is being asked to pay for and when he would receive it. The amendment left every one of them standing.

An amendment is supposed to make a record more accurate. This one made a single number more accurate and left the record, as a record, exactly as opaque as it was before. The office corrected the figure that was easiest to check and left untouched the questions that actually matter.

What this record does not show

This page has been careful to state only what the documents support. Several things the record does not show are worth stating explicitly, because they bound the criticism above.

The record does not show that the denial of the count was unlawful. A total number of convictions is a calculation, and MCL 15.233(5) relieves the office of any duty to create one. The certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1) is a recognized mechanism, and its use here is not improper on its face.

The record does not prove that a count exists somewhere in the office's systems. The office says no such document exists; this page takes that statement at face value, as the certificate requires.

The record does not give a reason for the revision from 1,500 to 1,100. The amendment is silent, and this page does not supply a motive the office did not state.

The record does not document requests 25-21 or 25-22. Footnote 2 names them, but they are not in this archive, and this page does not assert what they were.

The record does not show bad faith. The correction may have been entirely honest, and the fee may have been computed correctly for reasons the itemization does not display. What the record shows is a set of inconsistencies and silences, not a set of intentions.

And the record does not show that $9,548.00 is the wrong number as arithmetic. For 3,300 files at the stated rates, $9,548.00 is correct. The question this page raises is not whether the arithmetic adds up, but whether the number was ever derived from the volume it claims to rest on.

What to ask next

The amendment leaves the appeal clocks ambiguous, and that ambiguity is itself a reason to seek clarification before any deadline passes. Beyond that, five new requests would test the questions this file leaves open.

First, ask for the counts as a set of counts rather than a single total — convictions by year, by charge category, or by disposition — on the theory that a set of counts may exist as a report even if a single lifetime total does not. Second, ask for the office's report catalog: a list of the aggregate reports the case-management system can generate, which would show whether a count is a query away. Third, ask for the 3,300-file count as a document — the office relied on that figure to price the work, so the record of how it was derived should exist. Fourth, ask for the amendment file itself: any internal communication explaining why the February 5 letter was amended and how the 1,100 figure was determined. Fifth, ask for the waiver determination as a record, since a decision on a fee waiver is a public record of how the office exercised its discretion.

On the fee side, MCL 15.240a provides the mechanics for challenging a fee, including the right to seek a fee reduction or waiver from a court if the office's charge exceeds what the act allows. The 270-day estimate, the shared invoice, and the undecided waiver are all matters a fee challenge could reach. The requester should preserve both letters and the itemization, because the discrepancy between them is the clearest documentary evidence in the file.

Authorities and sources cited on this page

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

Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.231 et seq. The following provisions are cited above: MCL 15.233(1) (certification that a record does not exist); MCL 15.233(5) (no duty to create a compilation, summary, or new record); MCL 15.234 (fees, itemization, deposits, and waivers, including subsection (1) actual-cost limit, subsection (2) lowest-paid-capable-employee rate, subsection (9) public-interest waiver, and subsection (13) deposit and abandonment); MCL 15.235 (response deadlines and extensions, including subsection (1) five business days and subsection (2) ten-business-day extension); MCL 15.240 (appeals, including the 30-day appeal period and the 180-day disclosure deadline in subsection (6)); MCL 15.240a (fee challenges, including subsection (8) treatment of deposits as fees); and MCL 15.243(1)(a) (discretionary exemption cited on the Notice of Denial form).

Documents in the packet. The original response is seventeen pages: pages 1–2 the February 5 response letter; page 3 the Notice of Denial; page 4 an excerpt of MCL 15.240; page 5 a blank FOIA Appeal Form; page 6 a second excerpt of MCL 15.240; page 7 a FOIA Written Policies notice; pages 8–14 the Detailed Cost Itemization; pages 15–16 IPFone fax notifications; and page 17 the request as received. The amended packet is two pages: the February 12 amended response letter.

Public records relied on for figures. The $9,548.00 subtotal, the $4,774.00 deposit, the 270-day estimate, the 660 and 880 quarter-hour counts, the $6.20 quarter-hour charge, and the $24.82 hourly wage with fringe are all taken from the Detailed Cost Itemization. The 1,500 and 1,100 files-per-year figures are taken from the original and amended letters respectively. The $13,020.00 and $6,510.00 figures are computed on this page from the itemization's own rates and the original letter's own volume figure, and are labeled as computations, not as statements by the office.

On the amendment. The February 5 and February 12 letters were compared line by line. Only three elements differ: the date, the caption, and the files-per-year figure. The disposition, the statutory citations, the certificate, the fee, the deposit, the delivery estimate, both footnotes, the appeal paragraph, and the two typographical errors (“great than fifty dollars” and “the responsible, nonexempt public records”) are identical in both versions. The amendment is reproduced in full in the documents section below.

On the redactions. The requester's name, home address, telephone number, fax station identifier, and email address have been removed from every document published with this article, including the request as faxed, both response letters, the Notice of Denial form, the fee itemization, and the fax notifications. No substantive content was removed. The office itself made no redactions in this production, because it produced no records; the fee discussed above was an estimate for a production that never occurred.

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.

Response Letter (redacted) The February 5, 2026 cover letter, headed GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART: the finding that no aggregate total exists, the citation to MCL 15.233(5), the certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1), the offer to sell the underlying files, and footnote 1 resolving the election date to January 1, 2023. Notice of Denial and Appeal Forms (redacted) Five pages: the Notice of Denial for request 26-21 (received 02/02/2026, notice 02/05/2026), two reproductions of MCL 15.240, a blank FOIA Appeal Form, and the county's FOIA written-policies notice. Detailed Cost Itemization (redacted) Seven pages: the itemization pricing approximately 1,100 files per year across three years at 3 minutes and 4 minutes per file and $6.20 per quarter hour, for a subtotal of $9,548.00, a deposit of $4,774.00, and a 270-day estimate. Includes the blank fee-waiver section and footnote 2 naming requests 25-21 and 25-22. Request and Fax Record (redacted) Three pages: the IPFone fax notifications recording transmission at 12:29:53 p.m. Eastern on January 30, 2026, and the request as received, asking for the total number of criminal convictions from the prosecutor's election date through December 31, 2025. Amended Response Letter (redacted) The two-page February 12, 2026 amended response letter. It changes the stated volume from 'approximately 1,500 files per year (2023, 2024, 2025)' to 'approximately 1,100 files per year (2023, 2024, 2025)' and changes nothing else — not the denial, the statute, the certificate, the fee, the deposit, the 270 days, both footnotes, the appeal paragraph, or the two typographical errors.