Reasonable Request? Miami-Dade County Charges 22K for Salary FOIA

Friday, August 5, 2011 3:51 PM by Soren Kreider

Researchers at the Sunshine Review got quite a shock earlier this week when they made a routine FOIA request to the Miami-Dade Police Department in Florida as a part of their ongoing investigation into the salaries of local government officials.  Miami-Dade responded to their request by charging Sunshine Review $22,500 for information that most of the surrounding counties had volunteered for free.  Apparently collecting information on salary and benefit information for employees earning over $150,000 required $1,200 in IT costs and $21,300 of police assistance.

According to Sunshine Review President Michael Barnhart, the average price tag on their FOIA requests is $17, but for the cost of getting information from Miami-Dade PD, “it would be cheaper to fly down to Miami, and personally look up the files while staying at an all-inclusive South Beach hotel.”  This sort of opacity is not what Floridians expect from the local police charged with protecting them.  Allowing the public open access to the inner workings of local government is the surest way to protect against abuses of local power, as was seen too clearly in the City of Bell fiasco.  As long as the Miami-Dade PD persists in withholding information, local taxpayers will remain in the dark about where their hard-earned tax dollars are going, and what information Miami-Dade is so interested in hiding.

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